Showing posts with label Peace Corps. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Peace Corps. Show all posts
Sunday, November 13, 2011
Happy Three Year Anniversary
Well, I've definitely had my ups and downs, as have the other 41 people who landed in Kenya with me three years ago today to serve in the Peace Corps. I definitely would not have guessed that three years on I would be living in Tanzania and would go such a long time without seeing any of those 41 friends (I saw a few folks in June and haven't seen anyone since). Anyway, cheers to my friends! I am thinking about all of you today :)
Sunday, August 21, 2011
The Last of My Vacation (Part 1 - Western Kenya)
I had continued my intensive blogging about my adventures in Kenya and then Uganda, but unfortunately those posts were lost as well as the pictures. Now then, I left Nairobi and spent a few days out west with my friends Daniel and Jeff in Kisumu (they were in Peace Corps with me and have extended so that they are serving for a third year). They were wonderful hosts and hopefully I introduced them to some new exciting recipes in exchange for their hospitality. I was impressed with the amount and variety of fruits and vegetables in the market in Kisumu, but not much else about the city. Maybe I spent too much time in areas with open sewers or had too many arguments with matatu conductors, but I was pretty relieved when I hopped on the matatu out of Kisumu. I don't really know why, but I was having trouble falling asleep before 4 in the morning and was a bit groggy because of that. I probably should have made an effort to visit Lake Victoria, but I decided it was just easier to get out of town.
My next stop was Kakamega, which is famous for the massive forest outside of town. Arriving in town was a refreshing experience after my time in Kisumu. The air has such a fresh feel (probably due to the nearby forest--I grew up just a couple of miles from a wonderful forest preserve) and I was greeted by my friend Elizabeth (name changed as a precautionary measure). We had a few classes together back in high school and now she's a Peace Corps Volunteer in Kenya. Small world, eh? Anyway, I spent two days in her village which is a few kilometers outside of Kakamega and it was really nice. We spent a lot of time catching up on life back home and life in East Africa. She even baked cookies during one of the brief spells when there was electricity in the community. It was really amazing since I haven't had fresh cookies in a really long time.
It was sad leaving Kakamega, and I was planning on heading back to Bungoma to visit some folks there. Unfortunately, when I left Kisumu, I had forgotten my passport there, so I went back to see Jeff and Daniel again. I was also glad to see my friend Jessica who was in the Peace Corps group before me and is now in a nifty MBA program at Colorado State. We caught up for a bit before she had to run and catch a bus. Then Daniel and I made some quesadillas and the next day I was on a bus to Uganda.
The trip to Uganda was pretty uneventful (those are the best kind of journeys) and I arrived in Jinja late in the evening to meet with a donor who has been supporting my work in Tanzania. The organization brought together several of the groups they have been working with in East Africa to brainstorm some solutions to the problems that we've been dealing with and to find opportunities to collaborate moving forward. It was a crazy productive 24 hours and it was great to meet a lot of really cool people. I'm really excited about everyone who I met and definitely have some ideas for working with some groups in Kenya and Uganda.
During lunch the following day, a random person at the restaurant came up to me and asked me if I knew Amy Smith. He added that my IDDS shirt made me a bit conspicuous. Turns out he used to work with an organization that has collaborated a bit with D-Lab in the past. He was telling me some pretty horrific things about that organization, which were pretty depressing. Still, accountability is pretty low in this line of work, so stories like his are tragically common.
In the evening we went swimming in the Nile. It was pretty amazing. The current was super-strong and pulling us out, so we actually had a bit of a struggle to get back to land. Then a short time later, we saw some other tourists hop in the water nonchalantly and just start floating. We were a bit concerned, but we watched as the current took them in a nice circle around where we were and left them right back where they started. We ran back to the water and floated around the circuit twice. It was incredible.
After that, I headed down to Kampala to learn a bit more about a couple of the organizations that I had met there. I was pretty impressed with the massiveness of Kampala and the gaudiness of some parts of the city (outside the main mall and casino, there was a statue with some dinosaurs chasing a group of cavemen and cavewomen--I'm so bummed that I lost that picture). It was beautiful in some places, but there were an uncomfortable number of billboards with the Ugandan president looking at you. The most alarming one that I saw was the one that promised tolerance of most religions. I wonder which ones aren't tolerated.
I visited a group called Educate in Kampala and was pretty impressed with what they were working on there. I was talking a bunch with their technology manager about their work with cookstoves and making charcoal from agricultural waste. We were going on for 20 minutes before I asked him where he had learned so much about charcoal and he answered that he had found a bunch of pdfs online by someone named Amy Smith from MIT. Small world again. Well, we talked a bit more and after that I met some of the trainers who they've been working with in their program. All in all, it was a pretty enjoyable day.
After that, I hopped on a bus back to Nairobi. I opted for Easy Coach, which turned out to be anything but easy. (I've ridden with Easy Coach twice and they are 2 for 2 in disappointing me.) It was an overnight bus, and at 7 in the morning, our bus broke down and we stood in the frigid morning air (I haven't seen winter since 2008, so anything in the 40s is now frigid to me). So yeah, don't travel with Easy Coach.
I made it back to Nairobi to see my friend Jessica again and talk a lot more and then celebrate my friend Maria's birthday. I had a few more things to do in Nairobi before flying to Ghana, but I was pretty much ready to be done with adventure at that point, so I was looking forward to a laid-back 48 hours after that before flying out. Unfortunately, things didn't quite work out that way.
My next stop was Kakamega, which is famous for the massive forest outside of town. Arriving in town was a refreshing experience after my time in Kisumu. The air has such a fresh feel (probably due to the nearby forest--I grew up just a couple of miles from a wonderful forest preserve) and I was greeted by my friend Elizabeth (name changed as a precautionary measure). We had a few classes together back in high school and now she's a Peace Corps Volunteer in Kenya. Small world, eh? Anyway, I spent two days in her village which is a few kilometers outside of Kakamega and it was really nice. We spent a lot of time catching up on life back home and life in East Africa. She even baked cookies during one of the brief spells when there was electricity in the community. It was really amazing since I haven't had fresh cookies in a really long time.
It was sad leaving Kakamega, and I was planning on heading back to Bungoma to visit some folks there. Unfortunately, when I left Kisumu, I had forgotten my passport there, so I went back to see Jeff and Daniel again. I was also glad to see my friend Jessica who was in the Peace Corps group before me and is now in a nifty MBA program at Colorado State. We caught up for a bit before she had to run and catch a bus. Then Daniel and I made some quesadillas and the next day I was on a bus to Uganda.
The trip to Uganda was pretty uneventful (those are the best kind of journeys) and I arrived in Jinja late in the evening to meet with a donor who has been supporting my work in Tanzania. The organization brought together several of the groups they have been working with in East Africa to brainstorm some solutions to the problems that we've been dealing with and to find opportunities to collaborate moving forward. It was a crazy productive 24 hours and it was great to meet a lot of really cool people. I'm really excited about everyone who I met and definitely have some ideas for working with some groups in Kenya and Uganda.
During lunch the following day, a random person at the restaurant came up to me and asked me if I knew Amy Smith. He added that my IDDS shirt made me a bit conspicuous. Turns out he used to work with an organization that has collaborated a bit with D-Lab in the past. He was telling me some pretty horrific things about that organization, which were pretty depressing. Still, accountability is pretty low in this line of work, so stories like his are tragically common.
In the evening we went swimming in the Nile. It was pretty amazing. The current was super-strong and pulling us out, so we actually had a bit of a struggle to get back to land. Then a short time later, we saw some other tourists hop in the water nonchalantly and just start floating. We were a bit concerned, but we watched as the current took them in a nice circle around where we were and left them right back where they started. We ran back to the water and floated around the circuit twice. It was incredible.
After that, I headed down to Kampala to learn a bit more about a couple of the organizations that I had met there. I was pretty impressed with the massiveness of Kampala and the gaudiness of some parts of the city (outside the main mall and casino, there was a statue with some dinosaurs chasing a group of cavemen and cavewomen--I'm so bummed that I lost that picture). It was beautiful in some places, but there were an uncomfortable number of billboards with the Ugandan president looking at you. The most alarming one that I saw was the one that promised tolerance of most religions. I wonder which ones aren't tolerated.
I visited a group called Educate in Kampala and was pretty impressed with what they were working on there. I was talking a bunch with their technology manager about their work with cookstoves and making charcoal from agricultural waste. We were going on for 20 minutes before I asked him where he had learned so much about charcoal and he answered that he had found a bunch of pdfs online by someone named Amy Smith from MIT. Small world again. Well, we talked a bit more and after that I met some of the trainers who they've been working with in their program. All in all, it was a pretty enjoyable day.
After that, I hopped on a bus back to Nairobi. I opted for Easy Coach, which turned out to be anything but easy. (I've ridden with Easy Coach twice and they are 2 for 2 in disappointing me.) It was an overnight bus, and at 7 in the morning, our bus broke down and we stood in the frigid morning air (I haven't seen winter since 2008, so anything in the 40s is now frigid to me). So yeah, don't travel with Easy Coach.
I made it back to Nairobi to see my friend Jessica again and talk a lot more and then celebrate my friend Maria's birthday. I had a few more things to do in Nairobi before flying to Ghana, but I was pretty much ready to be done with adventure at that point, so I was looking forward to a laid-back 48 hours after that before flying out. Unfortunately, things didn't quite work out that way.
Sunday, June 19, 2011
To Kenya Once Again
Leaving Arusha was quite a process as I tried to get all of my tasks done (I didn't) before I take a 2 week vacation (well, I brought work with me, but I'm definitely in my vacation mindset). I finished my work at the office at 2:30 AM on Sunday morning, and Jodie convinced me that I would be better off taking the afternoon shuttle. Definitely good advice, considering I was already sleep-deprived and hadn't packed yet.
So I slept in on Sunday morning, packed everything that I'll need over the next two months (hopefully*) including some rather unwieldy charcoal briquetters. When I get on my flight, I'm a little worried I will have to wear 5 or 6 layers so that I can carry everything. Oh well, at least I won't be carrying everything around Kenya while I'm here.
I said my good-byes and hopped on the 2 PM shuttle (brilliant advice, Jodie). I napped, but we made it to the border right at 4, so I was pretty impressed with the pace that we kept. I had no problem with the Tanzanian side of the border, but when I got to the Kenyan side of the border, they told me that my 3 month Kenyan visa that I had purchased 1.5 months ago was not valid. They explained that since I have a Tanzanian residence permit in my passport, any time that I cross the border (even if I go to Uganda), my Kenyan visa becomes invalidated. It sounded like a pretty made-up rule to me, so I intend to research that a bit. Either way, it seems like some pretty bizarre fine print. And a good way to discourage people like me** from coming to Kenya.
Well, I was a bit irritated by that rule, but it did feel really good to finally arrive back in Nairobi. I headed to Upper Hill Campsite where I ran into one of my friends who served in Peace Corps with me and we caught up a bit when we saw another familiar face. It turns out my friend Sarah (one of the Deaf Education volunteers who is herself deaf) is also back in Kenya and traveling around a bit, so we all caught up and I expect I'll see Sarah a few more times on the trip.
* Actually, I already know that I forgot my dress shoes. Well, I can always make presentations in sneakers, right?
** And by that, I mean expatriates who have lots of friends in Kenya but are working in Tanzania.
So I slept in on Sunday morning, packed everything that I'll need over the next two months (hopefully*) including some rather unwieldy charcoal briquetters. When I get on my flight, I'm a little worried I will have to wear 5 or 6 layers so that I can carry everything. Oh well, at least I won't be carrying everything around Kenya while I'm here.
I said my good-byes and hopped on the 2 PM shuttle (brilliant advice, Jodie). I napped, but we made it to the border right at 4, so I was pretty impressed with the pace that we kept. I had no problem with the Tanzanian side of the border, but when I got to the Kenyan side of the border, they told me that my 3 month Kenyan visa that I had purchased 1.5 months ago was not valid. They explained that since I have a Tanzanian residence permit in my passport, any time that I cross the border (even if I go to Uganda), my Kenyan visa becomes invalidated. It sounded like a pretty made-up rule to me, so I intend to research that a bit. Either way, it seems like some pretty bizarre fine print. And a good way to discourage people like me** from coming to Kenya.
Well, I was a bit irritated by that rule, but it did feel really good to finally arrive back in Nairobi. I headed to Upper Hill Campsite where I ran into one of my friends who served in Peace Corps with me and we caught up a bit when we saw another familiar face. It turns out my friend Sarah (one of the Deaf Education volunteers who is herself deaf) is also back in Kenya and traveling around a bit, so we all caught up and I expect I'll see Sarah a few more times on the trip.
* Actually, I already know that I forgot my dress shoes. Well, I can always make presentations in sneakers, right?
** And by that, I mean expatriates who have lots of friends in Kenya but are working in Tanzania.
Kisumu pictures
Welcome to Kisumu
My hosts, Jeff and Daniel
If I were spending more time in Kisumu, I'd definitely hang out in this park.
Monday, May 2, 2011
Frisbee Tournament in Mombasa Day 3
We weren't playing in the first game of the day, so we took plenty of time to warm up and decided that we would start our next game with representatives from five different countries on the line. At this point, our main ambition was to win the spirit award, so we were just going out there to have a great time. So as we lined up against Peace Corps, we had Mic (Tanzania), Karina (Netherlands), Rose (UK), Angela (Canada) and Simeon (USA) out there.
I was psyched for the game, since I knew most of the players on the team. We went into the half trailing 6-4, and to start the second half, we put 5 girls on the line. They reminded us that we only needed one on the field to match them. We replied with a friendly smile that we would try not to embarrass them. We kept the girls out there for two points and they scored one and yielded one, before we subbed some fresh players in (and provided a bit more of a gender balance). We lost the game 11-7, but we all had big grins on our face.
After that, they took the results from the 6 games that everyone had played and seeded the teams for a single elimination bracket. We were the 8th seed, so we were playing the 1st seed. As it turns out, that meant the Ugandan team that we had played once the previous day. We were a little tired following our game with Peace Corps, but we lined up against Uganda with five girls on the team. We had to assure this team as well that we were confident in our strategy and that this was a perfectly sane strategy.
We stayed with them all the way to the half, with the score seesawing back and forth reaching 6-5 their lead going into the break. Several of the spectators as well as the other team seemed to be wondering if we were really the 8th seed. Unfortunately, for the second half, they seemed to draw on infinite reserves of energy, and we couldn't keep up. They pulled away and won 11-6, eliminating us from the tournament. They joined us on the field as we made a pyramid and congratulated us on some really solid play before we took a bunch of pictures together.
We ate a big lunch and reflected on our stats for the tournament. We finished 0-7, but we had also played five of our games against the top 3 seeds (Uganda, Mwanza and Uganda) and we played each of the two teams in the final twice. There was another team that finished 0-7 and we never got to play them, and they were only seeded ahead of us since they scored more points. We talked about scheduling a friendly match, but we were all a bit tired, so we just shook hands.
We swam in the pool and enjoyed the perfect coastal weather. Unfortunately, I forgot to put sunscreen on my legs (they almost never burn) and in my 20 minute swim, I picked up a pretty nasty sunburn. I spent most of the rest of the day hiding in the shade. We did go to watch the final match (Uganda vs. Uganda) and we were happy that the team that we found more sportsmanlike ultimately prevailed. After that, there were a few more random Frisbee related activities.
Jodie, Mic, Shannon and Karina all left early, so we said good-bye to them. We grabbed dinner at Twiga, where they further disappointed us by charging us 200 shillings for an avocado salad (three of us ordered it) that was listed on the menu for 150. They assured us that the menu was wrong and that we should have asked them the price beforehand. This seems like a good place to reiterate my comment that the service at Twiga Lodge was really disappointing and I hope that people traveling to the coast find more pleasant accommodations for their stay.
At night, there was a big party where they awarded prizes, and we were really excited to receive the spirit award (combined with a frisbee and a carved keychain for each of our players). We were really thrilled and everyone seemed really happy for us. There were some games at the party, but I mostly found quiet places to talk to some of my friends from Peace Corps about how their projects were going. Then I started hanging out with the remainder of my team at the party and we didn't crash until after 1.
I was psyched for the game, since I knew most of the players on the team. We went into the half trailing 6-4, and to start the second half, we put 5 girls on the line. They reminded us that we only needed one on the field to match them. We replied with a friendly smile that we would try not to embarrass them. We kept the girls out there for two points and they scored one and yielded one, before we subbed some fresh players in (and provided a bit more of a gender balance). We lost the game 11-7, but we all had big grins on our face.
After that, they took the results from the 6 games that everyone had played and seeded the teams for a single elimination bracket. We were the 8th seed, so we were playing the 1st seed. As it turns out, that meant the Ugandan team that we had played once the previous day. We were a little tired following our game with Peace Corps, but we lined up against Uganda with five girls on the team. We had to assure this team as well that we were confident in our strategy and that this was a perfectly sane strategy.
We stayed with them all the way to the half, with the score seesawing back and forth reaching 6-5 their lead going into the break. Several of the spectators as well as the other team seemed to be wondering if we were really the 8th seed. Unfortunately, for the second half, they seemed to draw on infinite reserves of energy, and we couldn't keep up. They pulled away and won 11-6, eliminating us from the tournament. They joined us on the field as we made a pyramid and congratulated us on some really solid play before we took a bunch of pictures together.
We ate a big lunch and reflected on our stats for the tournament. We finished 0-7, but we had also played five of our games against the top 3 seeds (Uganda, Mwanza and Uganda) and we played each of the two teams in the final twice. There was another team that finished 0-7 and we never got to play them, and they were only seeded ahead of us since they scored more points. We talked about scheduling a friendly match, but we were all a bit tired, so we just shook hands.
We swam in the pool and enjoyed the perfect coastal weather. Unfortunately, I forgot to put sunscreen on my legs (they almost never burn) and in my 20 minute swim, I picked up a pretty nasty sunburn. I spent most of the rest of the day hiding in the shade. We did go to watch the final match (Uganda vs. Uganda) and we were happy that the team that we found more sportsmanlike ultimately prevailed. After that, there were a few more random Frisbee related activities.
Jodie, Mic, Shannon and Karina all left early, so we said good-bye to them. We grabbed dinner at Twiga, where they further disappointed us by charging us 200 shillings for an avocado salad (three of us ordered it) that was listed on the menu for 150. They assured us that the menu was wrong and that we should have asked them the price beforehand. This seems like a good place to reiterate my comment that the service at Twiga Lodge was really disappointing and I hope that people traveling to the coast find more pleasant accommodations for their stay.
At night, there was a big party where they awarded prizes, and we were really excited to receive the spirit award (combined with a frisbee and a carved keychain for each of our players). We were really thrilled and everyone seemed really happy for us. There were some games at the party, but I mostly found quiet places to talk to some of my friends from Peace Corps about how their projects were going. Then I started hanging out with the remainder of my team at the party and we didn't crash until after 1.
Friday, April 29, 2011
Frisbee Tournament in Mombasa (Day 1)
Well, our weekly Frisbee matches were all building up to the event (we're trying to do Sunday games as well, but those haven't quite taken off yet). We sent a bunch of our players to Mombasa for an Ultimate Frisbee tournament last weekend. We heard about the tournament 3 months ago and decided to rustle up a team. The games were Saturday and Sunday on the beach south of Mombasa, so we traveled down there on Friday. We traveled as a team of 13 (Jodie, Mic, Simeon, Malachi, Janelle, Shannon, Tara, Angela, Barb, Claire, Rose, Karina and me), though only 10 of us played (Malachi is Simeon's 11 month old son, so he stayed on the sidelines with his mom, Janelle, and Barb had recently broken her wrist, so she filled the role of team manager).
We were on the Raqib bus (15,000 Tanzanian shillings or about $10 for a trip from Arusha to Mombasa), which I had taken many times when I lived in Kenya. We got there at 6:45 AM (well, everyone else followed my directions and got there at 6:30 and then had to wait for me to show up with the tickets). The bus left at 6:50 and the first song that came on the radio was Holiday by Madonna. We all took that as a good omen. The ride was pretty uneventful all the way to the Kenyan border, but the scenery was nice (we couldn't see Mt. Kilimanjaro, though, since it was cloudy). I was rather tired the whole trip, since I had woken up at 1:55 AM and didn't manage to fall asleep again.
At the border, we discovered that they were checking Yellow Fever cards because of an outbreak in Uganda. It was the first time any of us had seen this at this border crossing. Some of my fellow travelers hadn't packed theirs, but they talked to the medical officer and convinced them they were up-to-date and managed to get through. Other than that, it was just a long wait as they prepared visas for everyone, but we made it through without event and were on our way.
I spent a lot of time warning everyone how miserable the road is for the first 120 km once we get into Kenya, so they were braced. It wasn't actually too miserable (which is not to say it was pleasant), and I also told people to keep their eyes open for elephants, giraffes and possibly buffalo. We saw one giraffe near the road and Simeon said that he saw some elephants further out. I pointed out Maktau (the village where I served when I was in Peace Corps) to everyone as we drove past and had to admire it in the greenest condition I had ever seen it. The rains have definitely been helpful this year.
We made it to Voi where the road becomes much smoother and were relieved that we only had to deal with the heat. After another half hour or so, I woke up from a brief nap to discover that we were stopped to repair a flat tire. Apparently, while the conductor was jumping on the makeshift wrench to apply enough torque to loosen the lug-nuts, it bounced up and gave him a nasty cut in the upper-arm. I handed my first aid kit to Mic and he went out to clean up the wound and perform some first-aid. The tire had definitely been shredded, but thankfully, we were up and running again pretty quickly.
With all of the delays, we didn't roll into Mombasa until about 5:15 PM (8 hours is pretty good time, but over 10 isn't a big surprise). We put Simeon, Janelle, Malachi, Barb and Angela into a taxi and the rest of us took a matatu to Nakumatt to pick up some provisions for the weekend. The campsite didn't have cooking facilities, so our shopping bags were mostly filled with sandwich supplies, snacks and (for some of us) alcohol.
We made it out of Nakumatt and were right at the Likoni Ferry to take us to south Coast. A few people in the group commented that they felt like cattle. We stayed close and managed to avoid the pickpockets (always an accomplishment on the Likoni Ferry) and admired a nice sunset as the ferry struggled across. We hopped off the ferry and commandeered a matatu to take us directly to our campsite on Tiwi Beach (for price comparison, the taxi was 2,500 Kenyan Shillings--just over $30--split among 4 people, while the matatus and the ferry was 1,500 Kenyan Shillings split among 8 people).
We were all a bit wiped, but the first thing to do was to set up tents in the dark. Actually, I found some of my Peace Corps friends there, and caught up with them briefly and came back to discover that I had skipped out on the entirety of assembling the tent. Oops. Anyway, everyone else from the team went to grab dinner, but I spent more time hanging out with Peace Corps folks and playing Bananagrams (it was surprisingly addictive).
I sat down with the team after dinner and we talked a bit about rules, strategy and organization of the tournament. We typically play rather lax rules in our pick-up games, so I wanted to make sure that everyone understood what we would need to do the next day. After that, a group of us drank some wine straight from the box (classy, as they say in French) and ran out for a quick late-night dip in the Indian Ocean (the campsite was right on the beach). The tide was pretty far out and it was a bit rocky, so we didn't stay out too long and then decided to walk along the beach. We talked to some people from other teams as we walked and were feeling pretty psyched about the tournament.
We climbed into the tent (Shannon had a large tent, so he was sharing it with Tara, Rose, Claire, Karina and me) and were all asleep pretty instantaneously.
We were on the Raqib bus (15,000 Tanzanian shillings or about $10 for a trip from Arusha to Mombasa), which I had taken many times when I lived in Kenya. We got there at 6:45 AM (well, everyone else followed my directions and got there at 6:30 and then had to wait for me to show up with the tickets). The bus left at 6:50 and the first song that came on the radio was Holiday by Madonna. We all took that as a good omen. The ride was pretty uneventful all the way to the Kenyan border, but the scenery was nice (we couldn't see Mt. Kilimanjaro, though, since it was cloudy). I was rather tired the whole trip, since I had woken up at 1:55 AM and didn't manage to fall asleep again.
At the border, we discovered that they were checking Yellow Fever cards because of an outbreak in Uganda. It was the first time any of us had seen this at this border crossing. Some of my fellow travelers hadn't packed theirs, but they talked to the medical officer and convinced them they were up-to-date and managed to get through. Other than that, it was just a long wait as they prepared visas for everyone, but we made it through without event and were on our way.
I spent a lot of time warning everyone how miserable the road is for the first 120 km once we get into Kenya, so they were braced. It wasn't actually too miserable (which is not to say it was pleasant), and I also told people to keep their eyes open for elephants, giraffes and possibly buffalo. We saw one giraffe near the road and Simeon said that he saw some elephants further out. I pointed out Maktau (the village where I served when I was in Peace Corps) to everyone as we drove past and had to admire it in the greenest condition I had ever seen it. The rains have definitely been helpful this year.
We made it to Voi where the road becomes much smoother and were relieved that we only had to deal with the heat. After another half hour or so, I woke up from a brief nap to discover that we were stopped to repair a flat tire. Apparently, while the conductor was jumping on the makeshift wrench to apply enough torque to loosen the lug-nuts, it bounced up and gave him a nasty cut in the upper-arm. I handed my first aid kit to Mic and he went out to clean up the wound and perform some first-aid. The tire had definitely been shredded, but thankfully, we were up and running again pretty quickly.
With all of the delays, we didn't roll into Mombasa until about 5:15 PM (8 hours is pretty good time, but over 10 isn't a big surprise). We put Simeon, Janelle, Malachi, Barb and Angela into a taxi and the rest of us took a matatu to Nakumatt to pick up some provisions for the weekend. The campsite didn't have cooking facilities, so our shopping bags were mostly filled with sandwich supplies, snacks and (for some of us) alcohol.
We made it out of Nakumatt and were right at the Likoni Ferry to take us to south Coast. A few people in the group commented that they felt like cattle. We stayed close and managed to avoid the pickpockets (always an accomplishment on the Likoni Ferry) and admired a nice sunset as the ferry struggled across. We hopped off the ferry and commandeered a matatu to take us directly to our campsite on Tiwi Beach (for price comparison, the taxi was 2,500 Kenyan Shillings--just over $30--split among 4 people, while the matatus and the ferry was 1,500 Kenyan Shillings split among 8 people).
We were all a bit wiped, but the first thing to do was to set up tents in the dark. Actually, I found some of my Peace Corps friends there, and caught up with them briefly and came back to discover that I had skipped out on the entirety of assembling the tent. Oops. Anyway, everyone else from the team went to grab dinner, but I spent more time hanging out with Peace Corps folks and playing Bananagrams (it was surprisingly addictive).
I sat down with the team after dinner and we talked a bit about rules, strategy and organization of the tournament. We typically play rather lax rules in our pick-up games, so I wanted to make sure that everyone understood what we would need to do the next day. After that, a group of us drank some wine straight from the box (classy, as they say in French) and ran out for a quick late-night dip in the Indian Ocean (the campsite was right on the beach). The tide was pretty far out and it was a bit rocky, so we didn't stay out too long and then decided to walk along the beach. We talked to some people from other teams as we walked and were feeling pretty psyched about the tournament.
We climbed into the tent (Shannon had a large tent, so he was sharing it with Tara, Rose, Claire, Karina and me) and were all asleep pretty instantaneously.
Friday, January 21, 2011
Not Enough Time in Lusaka
After wrapping up the workshop, we all headed back to Lusaka. We packed into the back of the Peace Corps vehicle and set off on our way. David was driving and Kofi was riding up front while I was sitting with Alex, Amy, Bernard, Eric, Henry and Mindy. Amy can always be counted on to bring games for long car rides. There were word games (kinda like Taboo) and Charades (but we used an action figure named Bendy Bob since we couldn't really act things out in the vehicle). Anyway, it was a lot of fun and we even had time to debrief a whole lot of the workshop and talk about things like IDDS.
When we got back to Lusaka we went straight to the Country Director's house for dinner. He has a lovely family and was really welcoming. He wanted to hear all about the workshop and was asking lots of questions about IDDS. Amy and I were sitting next to him during dinner, so I was talking to him for a while. It got me thinking a lot about the contrasts between the Peace Corps Zambia program and the Peace Corps Kenya program and wondering if I would have stayed the full two years with the team in Zambia. In any case, I have to say that the volunteers in Peace Corps Zambia are really lucky to be in a beautiful country with such a supportive staff. On the other hand, I noticed that a lot of the volunteers drink a healthy amount and smoke like I used to when I was in Peace Corps. The volunteers were definitely a lot more positive about everything than I was during most of my service, but there was still something familiar in their outlook that I was glad to have put behind me. As a side note, I emailed the Peace Corps Kenya team since I thought that the workshop was so great and that there were some ideas that they could apply to the program there, and the Country Director for Kenya wrote back a curt response saying that he had seen everything already at a Peace Corps conference where the Zambia team won an award for most innovative post.
After the dinner, we went back to the hotel where we were staying. The promised wireless never materialized, but Eric and I took advantage of the time to have a late night meeting about IDDS and some important steps to take moving forward with Amy and Kofi chiming in sporadically as they worked on a grant proposal. It was really nice to meet face-to-face with the IDDS team and to really discuss the direction moving forward.
The next day we were at the Peace Corps office all morning. I used their internet to catch up on all sorts of things and got to meet a bunch of other volunteers as they set off for different destinations for Christmas. Amy, Kofi and Eric were meeting with some Peace Corps staff for an official debrief and then they brought in some old IDDS Zambia participants. Kenny, the director at DISACARE wheelchairs, was one of my friends at the summit in 2008, but I didn't even recognize him when I first saw him since he looked especially distinguished in his suit and glasses (he was also walking with a cane as opposed to 2008 when he was confined to his wheelchair). I also saw John, the director at Light of Hope (a community health program right outside Lusaka), who was on my team at IDDS in 2008 and we immediately started talking shop about Interlocking Stabilized Soil Block Makers (that's normal, right?) and about all our mutual friends. I was disappointed that I didn't have a chance to see more of my Zambian friends from IDDS, but it was nice to talk with them and to discuss the possibility of what IDDS 2012 in Zambia might look like. Then we took a photo of the IDDS family (Amy, Bernard, Eric, Henry, John, Kenny, Kofi and me), and it was great to have everyone in one place (I need that picture). Then I said good-bye to Amy, Eric and Kofi as they headed to the airport.
After that, I went to the Lusaka Showgrounds where they have an annual agricultural fair in August and is a space with low-rent offices the rest of the year. I was meeting with our Zambian distributor for GCS to sign some paperwork and talk about how to work together moving forward. I was really impressed with his exuberance and wanted to do everything that I could to support him, not as a member of GCS, but just because I could see how excited he was to help people and help the environment.
On my way back to the Peace Corps office, I visited Manda Hill Shopping Centre (a huge mall). It was kinda crazy how fancy it was there (I saw a Subway restaurant), and I strolled through the aisles of a store called Game in awe of how much it felt like being in a Target. But I wasn't there to shop (though I did grab a vuvuzela for my roommate Mic), I just wanted to see the other side of Zambia, so I grabbed a quick burger and headed back to the Peace Corps office to finish everything before I left. It was really hard saying good-bye to Nancy (she's the number two in Peace Corps Zambia) since she was so helpful and kind. I knew that I needed to come back to Zambia and see a lot more of the country.
The Peace Corps driver dropped Bernard and I off at the bus station and helped us find where the buses to Tanzania were parked. John came back to find us before the bus left and gave Bernard and me each a scarf from Light of Hope and we made donations to support the new football program that they're starting over there. But soon, the clock read 4:00, so it was time to begin our interminable journey home.
When we got back to Lusaka we went straight to the Country Director's house for dinner. He has a lovely family and was really welcoming. He wanted to hear all about the workshop and was asking lots of questions about IDDS. Amy and I were sitting next to him during dinner, so I was talking to him for a while. It got me thinking a lot about the contrasts between the Peace Corps Zambia program and the Peace Corps Kenya program and wondering if I would have stayed the full two years with the team in Zambia. In any case, I have to say that the volunteers in Peace Corps Zambia are really lucky to be in a beautiful country with such a supportive staff. On the other hand, I noticed that a lot of the volunteers drink a healthy amount and smoke like I used to when I was in Peace Corps. The volunteers were definitely a lot more positive about everything than I was during most of my service, but there was still something familiar in their outlook that I was glad to have put behind me. As a side note, I emailed the Peace Corps Kenya team since I thought that the workshop was so great and that there were some ideas that they could apply to the program there, and the Country Director for Kenya wrote back a curt response saying that he had seen everything already at a Peace Corps conference where the Zambia team won an award for most innovative post.
After the dinner, we went back to the hotel where we were staying. The promised wireless never materialized, but Eric and I took advantage of the time to have a late night meeting about IDDS and some important steps to take moving forward with Amy and Kofi chiming in sporadically as they worked on a grant proposal. It was really nice to meet face-to-face with the IDDS team and to really discuss the direction moving forward.
The next day we were at the Peace Corps office all morning. I used their internet to catch up on all sorts of things and got to meet a bunch of other volunteers as they set off for different destinations for Christmas. Amy, Kofi and Eric were meeting with some Peace Corps staff for an official debrief and then they brought in some old IDDS Zambia participants. Kenny, the director at DISACARE wheelchairs, was one of my friends at the summit in 2008, but I didn't even recognize him when I first saw him since he looked especially distinguished in his suit and glasses (he was also walking with a cane as opposed to 2008 when he was confined to his wheelchair). I also saw John, the director at Light of Hope (a community health program right outside Lusaka), who was on my team at IDDS in 2008 and we immediately started talking shop about Interlocking Stabilized Soil Block Makers (that's normal, right?) and about all our mutual friends. I was disappointed that I didn't have a chance to see more of my Zambian friends from IDDS, but it was nice to talk with them and to discuss the possibility of what IDDS 2012 in Zambia might look like. Then we took a photo of the IDDS family (Amy, Bernard, Eric, Henry, John, Kenny, Kofi and me), and it was great to have everyone in one place (I need that picture). Then I said good-bye to Amy, Eric and Kofi as they headed to the airport.
After that, I went to the Lusaka Showgrounds where they have an annual agricultural fair in August and is a space with low-rent offices the rest of the year. I was meeting with our Zambian distributor for GCS to sign some paperwork and talk about how to work together moving forward. I was really impressed with his exuberance and wanted to do everything that I could to support him, not as a member of GCS, but just because I could see how excited he was to help people and help the environment.
On my way back to the Peace Corps office, I visited Manda Hill Shopping Centre (a huge mall). It was kinda crazy how fancy it was there (I saw a Subway restaurant), and I strolled through the aisles of a store called Game in awe of how much it felt like being in a Target. But I wasn't there to shop (though I did grab a vuvuzela for my roommate Mic), I just wanted to see the other side of Zambia, so I grabbed a quick burger and headed back to the Peace Corps office to finish everything before I left. It was really hard saying good-bye to Nancy (she's the number two in Peace Corps Zambia) since she was so helpful and kind. I knew that I needed to come back to Zambia and see a lot more of the country.
The Peace Corps driver dropped Bernard and I off at the bus station and helped us find where the buses to Tanzania were parked. John came back to find us before the bus left and gave Bernard and me each a scarf from Light of Hope and we made donations to support the new football program that they're starting over there. But soon, the clock read 4:00, so it was time to begin our interminable journey home.
Thursday, January 20, 2011
Appropriate Technology Workshop Part 5
On the third day of the workshop, we were doing a lot of work on finishing up projects. But, the workshop wouldn't be complete without a charcoal demonstration, so in the morning, we did side-by-side charcoal burns. We tested out the kiln that they had assembled a few days before as well as an oil drum. As Kofi talked a bit about the kilns, I was running back and forth to the kitchen to make sure that we had materials to demonstrate charcoal binding (the ones I had collected the previous day had been thrown out--understandably so, as few people would assume that someone would want to save those concoctions). Fortunately, that was all set, so as we talked about the process, Amy and I went back and forth explaining. It was slightly difficult, since I hadn't conducted a burn with her in over two years and the process had evolved, but we still had a good time presenting. At one point, I was trying to explain what was going on while I was completely engulfed in smoke as the water vapor burned off. However, all in all, the process went well and people were pretty excited about everything. We had some issues sealing the brick kiln, which led to a good discussion on how to improve the design, but people were excited to be asked for their input on improving the process. And we closed the demo with David and I talking about briquetting, which was a really fun conversation.
Most of the rest of the day was project work. It was nice to see the designs taking shape. One of my favorite contrasts was a Zambian designed hand-washing station that was about the simplest design I've ever seen next to an American designed one with rope following a crazy path and four pulleys that still didn't seem to work quite as well. I was really impressed with the mango picker (and even tried it out a few times to help some of the other teams get mangoes for slicing, peeling and pressing). I enjoyed watching the evaporative cooling team think about the possible uses for their unit. I was blown away by the seed planter (Bernard couldn't conceal his amazement, and it takes a lot to wow him). I enjoyed looking at the corn shelling designs and lots and lots more projects taking shape. Even Bernard was working on a valve for the well-digging tool so that we wouldn't have to get as muddy (after we all took our first crack at laundry, we were definitely grateful for that).
The volunteers cooked for us again, which was wonderful again and after a peaceful night, we were trying to get everything ready to show visitors from the community. Unfortunately, the worst of the rain came that morning, so we decided to cancel the showcase. But as we were canceling it, the weather cleared up significantly and we decided to un-cancel it. I was most excited to redeem myself with the oil presses (we didn't have enough peanuts to fill the screw press, so we were using it as a mango press, which was interesting in its own right). Everyone had a final burst of energy to get things as close to ready as possible.
As people started arriving, we talked a bit with them about what they would be seeing and then let them wander through. I couldn't resist sharing my thoughts on charcoal making and peanut shelling, but I was mostly talking about oil presses. People were impressed this time by how easy it was to use and enjoyed trying it for themselves (I made sure to explain that there are plenty of difficulties with the design as well). There was one visitor who felt compelled to tell all of us that none of these machines would be useful in the villages. All the villagers loudly disagreed with him (he was clearly urban and had spent little or no time in his life in villages) as he went from place to place, but that didn't stop him from offering his "expert" opinion every time. I saw it as a good example that if you just listen to one person who is happy to pretend they know everything, you can get a lot of incorrect information.
Anyway, the showcase was a lot of fun and everyone seemed to really enjoy it. After that, we went back to the hotel for the closing ceremony and when we got to the room that we had reserved for it, we found a church group had also reserved the room. Ummmmm, yeah. The hotel was nice enough to let us take over their dining room and we had a fun time in there. Everyone stood up and said a few words and we all received certificates and none of us could believe everything that we had accomplished over those 4 short days. It was really sad knowing that we were leaving after such a short time, but we were glad that we were able to become close friends so quickly.
The trainers' all went out for a celebratory dinner and final discussion (Amy and Kofi treated us, which was even more amazing). It was a lot of fun and we joked a lot (well, that happened at every meeting) and even found humor in the food that we were eating. My favorite part was learning that some people call traffic lights "robots". I'm not entirely sure what part of the world that comes from, but it was really fun to discuss that and other examples where we're all speaking the same language, but the words are so different. In the morning we had a few housekeeping tasks as we cleaned everything up and packed up the vehicle to head back to Lusaka. My luggage was nearly left behind, but Eric heroically grabbed it and saved the day.
Most of the rest of the day was project work. It was nice to see the designs taking shape. One of my favorite contrasts was a Zambian designed hand-washing station that was about the simplest design I've ever seen next to an American designed one with rope following a crazy path and four pulleys that still didn't seem to work quite as well. I was really impressed with the mango picker (and even tried it out a few times to help some of the other teams get mangoes for slicing, peeling and pressing). I enjoyed watching the evaporative cooling team think about the possible uses for their unit. I was blown away by the seed planter (Bernard couldn't conceal his amazement, and it takes a lot to wow him). I enjoyed looking at the corn shelling designs and lots and lots more projects taking shape. Even Bernard was working on a valve for the well-digging tool so that we wouldn't have to get as muddy (after we all took our first crack at laundry, we were definitely grateful for that).
The volunteers cooked for us again, which was wonderful again and after a peaceful night, we were trying to get everything ready to show visitors from the community. Unfortunately, the worst of the rain came that morning, so we decided to cancel the showcase. But as we were canceling it, the weather cleared up significantly and we decided to un-cancel it. I was most excited to redeem myself with the oil presses (we didn't have enough peanuts to fill the screw press, so we were using it as a mango press, which was interesting in its own right). Everyone had a final burst of energy to get things as close to ready as possible.
As people started arriving, we talked a bit with them about what they would be seeing and then let them wander through. I couldn't resist sharing my thoughts on charcoal making and peanut shelling, but I was mostly talking about oil presses. People were impressed this time by how easy it was to use and enjoyed trying it for themselves (I made sure to explain that there are plenty of difficulties with the design as well). There was one visitor who felt compelled to tell all of us that none of these machines would be useful in the villages. All the villagers loudly disagreed with him (he was clearly urban and had spent little or no time in his life in villages) as he went from place to place, but that didn't stop him from offering his "expert" opinion every time. I saw it as a good example that if you just listen to one person who is happy to pretend they know everything, you can get a lot of incorrect information.
Anyway, the showcase was a lot of fun and everyone seemed to really enjoy it. After that, we went back to the hotel for the closing ceremony and when we got to the room that we had reserved for it, we found a church group had also reserved the room. Ummmmm, yeah. The hotel was nice enough to let us take over their dining room and we had a fun time in there. Everyone stood up and said a few words and we all received certificates and none of us could believe everything that we had accomplished over those 4 short days. It was really sad knowing that we were leaving after such a short time, but we were glad that we were able to become close friends so quickly.
The trainers' all went out for a celebratory dinner and final discussion (Amy and Kofi treated us, which was even more amazing). It was a lot of fun and we joked a lot (well, that happened at every meeting) and even found humor in the food that we were eating. My favorite part was learning that some people call traffic lights "robots". I'm not entirely sure what part of the world that comes from, but it was really fun to discuss that and other examples where we're all speaking the same language, but the words are so different. In the morning we had a few housekeeping tasks as we cleaned everything up and packed up the vehicle to head back to Lusaka. My luggage was nearly left behind, but Eric heroically grabbed it and saved the day.
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
Appropriate Technology Workshop Part 4
Well, I just want to say that there are fantastic pictures related to this post, but I don't have them. I'm hoping to get some copies of them in the coming weeks, so I'll be sure to share them as soon as I do. Also, I want to apologize for the fact that I'm still posting stories from December. I have a few more before I move on to my adventures from January (I've got a bunch of those as well). Hopefully I can start telling stories as they happen again soon-ish.
Anyway, the weather had been mostly co-operative during our time in Zambia, but we knew that we were there at the start of the rainy season (which was fortunate in that it provided us with an ample bounty of mangoes) and had to be ready in case the skies opened up and deluged the town as they are wont to do in that part of Zambia. Sure enough, starting with the second day, we had a lot of moving around as we tried to work in spite of the rain. It was mostly successful, but definitely complicated things a bit.
Day 2 had one of my favorite presentations where Amy was showing how a design for a honey press might evolve and Bernard just put together a few cardboard contraptions to show people how to do very simple designs to evaluate concepts. We were having more discussions on the second day and although half the participants were Peace Corps Volunteers while the other half were counterparts from the villages where the volunteers were stationed, much more than half of the substance was coming from the volunteers. I even led a session that went much better than my previous one (still with a few fits and starts, but barely noticeable to the audience) and felt a lot better about that.
The really interesting part of day 2 was during the end of the lunch break when Amy wanted to test out a well-digging method that only uses metal pipes and water. Kofi suggested that we should probably wait, but Amy went ahead with it. Step 1 was learning how to draw water up a pipe using your hand using a basin (you bring the pipe up and down with your hand over the top with a suction grip allowing air out slowly, which draws water in from the basin). We all really enjoyed this and set up two adjacent basins so that people could have water fights as the water sprayed all over once it reached the top. After that, we moved on to step 2, which consisted of doing the process in the same way, but instead of a basin filled with water, it was a small hole. In this sense, we were using a lot more force to draw water up the pipe and bring mud with it. However, we were all taking turns and spraying and the mud was flying everywhere. In order to create enough force on the pipe, we needed to have 3 people helping lift it and the person whose hand was acting as a seal got some pretty nasty blisters on their palm. As we got deeper, we attached more pipes (the pipes were threaded so that we could put more on) and had more people helping with it. At the 7 meter depth, we had 5 people working on the pipe and with all the mud spraying, we were all indistinguishable mud monsters. Everyone took lots of pictures. I offered hugs to several people who opted to stand a safe distance away and watch, but they all declined. I felt bad for some of the Zambians who had coated some of their best clothes in mud, but they didn't seem to regret it at all. Everyone who had participated just had the biggest smiles on their faces and probably would have dug all afternoon if we didn't have several other projects to work on. One man named Martin showed particular enthusiasm for the method and we were all predicting that if we visited his village after one month, we would find dozens of new wells dug everywhere. (I promise to post the pictures up here as soon as I get them.)
We also had some technology demonstrations in the afternoon. I was showing the oil presses, so the wonderful housekeeper Esther roasted some peanuts and sunflower seeds for me (I had gone to the market with David and gotten much better prices the 2nd time around) so that we could extract peanut and sunflower oil. One of the people who was hosting us had assured us that he could get all the supplies we needed like peanuts and sunflower seeds and kept assuring us that it would be just one more day. When it came down to the wire we finally just bought our supplies, but it meant that we hadn't tested the machines before using them. I had used similar ones three years before, so I was hoping it was like riding a bicycle. Turns out that it wasn't. Neither press really worked (the yenga press and screw press from this post) and were pretty underwhelming for the participants. It was nice that everyone started trying to tinker with it to make it work, which really drove home to me the importance of a good oil press, but mostly it served to highlight some of the flaws in the design and to chastise me again for not practicing before presenting.
Still, it was nice to see all the technologies coming along nicely. After we cleaned up for the day, the volunteers cooked vegetarian stir-fry for us, which was delicious, and it was fun to hang out and talk about experiences in Peace Corps and life in general. It was also nice to be eating multiple complete meals in a day again. Sadly, it also made me realize how much I miss cooking as a way to unwind.
Anyway, the weather had been mostly co-operative during our time in Zambia, but we knew that we were there at the start of the rainy season (which was fortunate in that it provided us with an ample bounty of mangoes) and had to be ready in case the skies opened up and deluged the town as they are wont to do in that part of Zambia. Sure enough, starting with the second day, we had a lot of moving around as we tried to work in spite of the rain. It was mostly successful, but definitely complicated things a bit.
Day 2 had one of my favorite presentations where Amy was showing how a design for a honey press might evolve and Bernard just put together a few cardboard contraptions to show people how to do very simple designs to evaluate concepts. We were having more discussions on the second day and although half the participants were Peace Corps Volunteers while the other half were counterparts from the villages where the volunteers were stationed, much more than half of the substance was coming from the volunteers. I even led a session that went much better than my previous one (still with a few fits and starts, but barely noticeable to the audience) and felt a lot better about that.
The really interesting part of day 2 was during the end of the lunch break when Amy wanted to test out a well-digging method that only uses metal pipes and water. Kofi suggested that we should probably wait, but Amy went ahead with it. Step 1 was learning how to draw water up a pipe using your hand using a basin (you bring the pipe up and down with your hand over the top with a suction grip allowing air out slowly, which draws water in from the basin). We all really enjoyed this and set up two adjacent basins so that people could have water fights as the water sprayed all over once it reached the top. After that, we moved on to step 2, which consisted of doing the process in the same way, but instead of a basin filled with water, it was a small hole. In this sense, we were using a lot more force to draw water up the pipe and bring mud with it. However, we were all taking turns and spraying and the mud was flying everywhere. In order to create enough force on the pipe, we needed to have 3 people helping lift it and the person whose hand was acting as a seal got some pretty nasty blisters on their palm. As we got deeper, we attached more pipes (the pipes were threaded so that we could put more on) and had more people helping with it. At the 7 meter depth, we had 5 people working on the pipe and with all the mud spraying, we were all indistinguishable mud monsters. Everyone took lots of pictures. I offered hugs to several people who opted to stand a safe distance away and watch, but they all declined. I felt bad for some of the Zambians who had coated some of their best clothes in mud, but they didn't seem to regret it at all. Everyone who had participated just had the biggest smiles on their faces and probably would have dug all afternoon if we didn't have several other projects to work on. One man named Martin showed particular enthusiasm for the method and we were all predicting that if we visited his village after one month, we would find dozens of new wells dug everywhere. (I promise to post the pictures up here as soon as I get them.)
We also had some technology demonstrations in the afternoon. I was showing the oil presses, so the wonderful housekeeper Esther roasted some peanuts and sunflower seeds for me (I had gone to the market with David and gotten much better prices the 2nd time around) so that we could extract peanut and sunflower oil. One of the people who was hosting us had assured us that he could get all the supplies we needed like peanuts and sunflower seeds and kept assuring us that it would be just one more day. When it came down to the wire we finally just bought our supplies, but it meant that we hadn't tested the machines before using them. I had used similar ones three years before, so I was hoping it was like riding a bicycle. Turns out that it wasn't. Neither press really worked (the yenga press and screw press from this post) and were pretty underwhelming for the participants. It was nice that everyone started trying to tinker with it to make it work, which really drove home to me the importance of a good oil press, but mostly it served to highlight some of the flaws in the design and to chastise me again for not practicing before presenting.
Still, it was nice to see all the technologies coming along nicely. After we cleaned up for the day, the volunteers cooked vegetarian stir-fry for us, which was delicious, and it was fun to hang out and talk about experiences in Peace Corps and life in general. It was also nice to be eating multiple complete meals in a day again. Sadly, it also made me realize how much I miss cooking as a way to unwind.
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
Appropriate Technology Workshop Part 3
The start of the workshop was delayed by a day because of a scheduling miscommunication. This meant that our already intense five-day curriculum needed to be packed into four days. But then, we wouldn't all be there if we didn't like a challenge. In theory, having an extra day should have made the organizers feel less rushed, but somehow, it seemed to make us all feel like we needed to get more done, so even though it was like gaining a day, we still had a lot to do.
I ran to the market and tried to find some supplies for the event. I bought some peanuts in the shell, which were really hard to find (and which I was actually severely overcharged for since there was only one person in the market who hadn't already taken them out of the shell) and when I got home, I discovered that they were actually immature peanuts and wouldn't work for the sheller we were using. Oh well. It was also at this point that I discovered that they had drinking yogurt (a thin dairy product that tastes like yogurt, but is only slightly thicker than milk) in the supermarket and started trying to down one a day (it was much healthier than my soda habit and much cheaper than living off of juice). I don't know why Tanzania doesn't have much drinking yogurt, but it was big in Kenya and I was thrilled to discover that Zambia had banana flavored yogurt.
I was also avoiding the hotel's kitchen and living mostly off of peanut butter and bread. I decided to try to change things up by buying some potatoes and cooking them (remember, the room had a hotpot). It didn't go so well. I boiled some water. Put some potatoes in a cup and poured the boiling water onto them. Let them sit for five minutes and dumped out the water and poured more boiling water onto them. I repeated this about 4 times before adding a bunch of salt and trying to eat them. Turns out that potatoes prepared this way are borderline edible. I was pretty hungry too, so I'm guessing that under almost any other circumstances, they would have been completely inedible.
In the evening, the participants started to arrive, and I was torn between trying to meet them and trying to plan for the next day. Since I was presenting a session on problem framing and didn't have a whole lot of sense how to do it, I wanted to really work the lesson over in my head since I didn't have a whole lot of time to talk with Amy about what she had in mind. We also needed to do some final prep work to get the spaces ready for the next day, so I was disappointed that I didn't get to spend more time getting to know people before the workshop started.
The next morning we did our welcomes and introductions and everything was going really smoothly (the extra day pretty much guaranteed that). We told everyone how much we planned to accomplish and it sounded pretty daunting, but everyone was really energized about the whole program. During the tea break, Amy came up to me to show me the lesson plan that she had put together for my session so that it would have some continuity. It was a lot better than what I had, so I decided to base my lesson mostly around her idea. She also gave me the assignment to set up some bowls of mangoes with a towel over them (one part of the workshop was to have them work in teams to design mango-processing technologies since they were so abundant during that part of the year, so we wanted to have a dramatic reveal of the theme). Although I never watched cooking shows much, I was trying to use Iron Chef for inspiration. A nice big stack of mangoes (including a few strategically stacked around the bowls) that could be shown with adequate intrigue. In hindsight, I should have spent more time nailing down how I was going to do my session.
The mango reveal went really well and people were definitely entertained. My session did not go well at all. I was jumping back and forth between Amy's lesson plan and my own and presenting it like a high school teacher by providing way too many examples and constantly checking if there were any questions (in some ways that's my natural way of presenting, but it didn't do much to help me connect with my audience). The content did not come across clearly, the follow-up activity was explained poorly and I definitely did not seem like a confident presenter (I kept doubting myself as I tried to pull the bullet points from the lesson plan). The audience was very nice about humoring me and we got through the lesson, but I was mortified by how badly I had botched it. I have to say that Amy did a good job of coaching me through it without shaking me further or letting me get discouraged and without letting the rest of the room know how much I needed coaching.
I felt like I regained some face while I was walking around and talking with teams on a one-on-one basis (well, at least in a small group setting) and I was able to redeem myself by the time everyone was working on their projects in the afternoon. As soon as we had our trainers' meeting, I announced that I wanted to try leading another session because I definitely needed practice. Everyone was supportive and reassuring about how my session had gone, which was a little disappointing since I wanted really blunt feedback, but I was grateful for their kindness. Amy signed me up for another session and I knew I needed to spend a lot of time and really figure out what I needed to do to get it right.
But in the mean time, there were a lot of projects going on. I was talking to one team about what it would take to design a centrifuge for honey extraction (and the possibility of making it pedal-powered), and then another team about the principles of an evaporative cooling system (I wish my physics degree had given me a more practical background in thermodynamics), and then another team about building smokers and solar dryers and then another team about oil extraction and then back to the second team to talk about shelling peanuts and so on. It was a lot of fun and a really great way to get to know everyone. By the end of the first day, we had definitely accomplished a lot, but we could see that we had our work cut out for us.
I ran to the market and tried to find some supplies for the event. I bought some peanuts in the shell, which were really hard to find (and which I was actually severely overcharged for since there was only one person in the market who hadn't already taken them out of the shell) and when I got home, I discovered that they were actually immature peanuts and wouldn't work for the sheller we were using. Oh well. It was also at this point that I discovered that they had drinking yogurt (a thin dairy product that tastes like yogurt, but is only slightly thicker than milk) in the supermarket and started trying to down one a day (it was much healthier than my soda habit and much cheaper than living off of juice). I don't know why Tanzania doesn't have much drinking yogurt, but it was big in Kenya and I was thrilled to discover that Zambia had banana flavored yogurt.
I was also avoiding the hotel's kitchen and living mostly off of peanut butter and bread. I decided to try to change things up by buying some potatoes and cooking them (remember, the room had a hotpot). It didn't go so well. I boiled some water. Put some potatoes in a cup and poured the boiling water onto them. Let them sit for five minutes and dumped out the water and poured more boiling water onto them. I repeated this about 4 times before adding a bunch of salt and trying to eat them. Turns out that potatoes prepared this way are borderline edible. I was pretty hungry too, so I'm guessing that under almost any other circumstances, they would have been completely inedible.
In the evening, the participants started to arrive, and I was torn between trying to meet them and trying to plan for the next day. Since I was presenting a session on problem framing and didn't have a whole lot of sense how to do it, I wanted to really work the lesson over in my head since I didn't have a whole lot of time to talk with Amy about what she had in mind. We also needed to do some final prep work to get the spaces ready for the next day, so I was disappointed that I didn't get to spend more time getting to know people before the workshop started.
The next morning we did our welcomes and introductions and everything was going really smoothly (the extra day pretty much guaranteed that). We told everyone how much we planned to accomplish and it sounded pretty daunting, but everyone was really energized about the whole program. During the tea break, Amy came up to me to show me the lesson plan that she had put together for my session so that it would have some continuity. It was a lot better than what I had, so I decided to base my lesson mostly around her idea. She also gave me the assignment to set up some bowls of mangoes with a towel over them (one part of the workshop was to have them work in teams to design mango-processing technologies since they were so abundant during that part of the year, so we wanted to have a dramatic reveal of the theme). Although I never watched cooking shows much, I was trying to use Iron Chef for inspiration. A nice big stack of mangoes (including a few strategically stacked around the bowls) that could be shown with adequate intrigue. In hindsight, I should have spent more time nailing down how I was going to do my session.
The mango reveal went really well and people were definitely entertained. My session did not go well at all. I was jumping back and forth between Amy's lesson plan and my own and presenting it like a high school teacher by providing way too many examples and constantly checking if there were any questions (in some ways that's my natural way of presenting, but it didn't do much to help me connect with my audience). The content did not come across clearly, the follow-up activity was explained poorly and I definitely did not seem like a confident presenter (I kept doubting myself as I tried to pull the bullet points from the lesson plan). The audience was very nice about humoring me and we got through the lesson, but I was mortified by how badly I had botched it. I have to say that Amy did a good job of coaching me through it without shaking me further or letting me get discouraged and without letting the rest of the room know how much I needed coaching.
I felt like I regained some face while I was walking around and talking with teams on a one-on-one basis (well, at least in a small group setting) and I was able to redeem myself by the time everyone was working on their projects in the afternoon. As soon as we had our trainers' meeting, I announced that I wanted to try leading another session because I definitely needed practice. Everyone was supportive and reassuring about how my session had gone, which was a little disappointing since I wanted really blunt feedback, but I was grateful for their kindness. Amy signed me up for another session and I knew I needed to spend a lot of time and really figure out what I needed to do to get it right.
But in the mean time, there were a lot of projects going on. I was talking to one team about what it would take to design a centrifuge for honey extraction (and the possibility of making it pedal-powered), and then another team about the principles of an evaporative cooling system (I wish my physics degree had given me a more practical background in thermodynamics), and then another team about building smokers and solar dryers and then another team about oil extraction and then back to the second team to talk about shelling peanuts and so on. It was a lot of fun and a really great way to get to know everyone. By the end of the first day, we had definitely accomplished a lot, but we could see that we had our work cut out for us.
Monday, January 17, 2011
Appropriate Technology Workshop Part 2 (New Charcoal Project)
As we were getting everything ready for when all the participants were arriving, we had the opportunity to work a bit on our own projects. I wanted to spend some time doing charcoal work.
One of the big struggles with the charcoal from agricultural waste project is that in order to make the charcoal into briquettes, you need a sticky binding material. Typically, we use a bit of porridge made from cassava (I've also used wheat flour), which is nice and sticky. Many communities, however, have issues with food scarcity, so asking them to divert this precious resource into cooking fuel is rarely worthwhile (the exception being in peri-urban areas, where charcoal usually fetches a rather high price and is a good way to increase income). Items like dung or plant extracts may be sticky, but they often produce some harmful chemicals when burned.
So, during the workshop set-up, while other people were building all sorts of technologies, I was off in the kitchen experimenting. The first day we had some oranges, mangoes and bananas. I made a few different recipes for the experiments: boiled banana with and without peel, mashed uncooked banana, mashed rotten mango, mashed mango peel, orange juice, and orange juice concentrate (as well as cassava porridge as a control). Then, I used the charcoal briquetter and some charcoal powder and made a briquette with each binder and left them out in the sun to dry. Unfortunately, most of the best results were from using valuable products like boiled banana without peel or mango juice (technically, there are surplus mangoes in this area, but that's not common in many of the areas I've tried charcoal projects) or the orange juice.
But I was not about to give up. When I boiled the banana peel, I saw that it had made a somewhat sticky liquid, but by adding the stringy pieces of the peel it had become much weaker. So, in the interests of finding a method that also doesn't require boiling, I used a large mortar and pestle to crush the banana peel and poured water slowly to collect the residue that was coming out. (The process took some practice and there were a few times where I splashed banana peel juice in my face.) When I got rid of the solid part, I found that it was actually a fairly sticky liquid. I tried the same process with mango peel and discovered that it also looked pretty good.
My colleague David (a member of the Peace Corps Zambia staff) helped me out by diligently making lots of briquettes. We were not entirely thrilled by how popular the charcoal was with the flies, but once it dried, we found that it held together really well. We also started joking about charging a higher price for fish grilled over "fruit-infused charcoal". Maybe half-joking. I'm curious about whether the same would work for things like potato peels, but I feel like this is the start to a much more workable solution.
One of the big struggles with the charcoal from agricultural waste project is that in order to make the charcoal into briquettes, you need a sticky binding material. Typically, we use a bit of porridge made from cassava (I've also used wheat flour), which is nice and sticky. Many communities, however, have issues with food scarcity, so asking them to divert this precious resource into cooking fuel is rarely worthwhile (the exception being in peri-urban areas, where charcoal usually fetches a rather high price and is a good way to increase income). Items like dung or plant extracts may be sticky, but they often produce some harmful chemicals when burned.
So, during the workshop set-up, while other people were building all sorts of technologies, I was off in the kitchen experimenting. The first day we had some oranges, mangoes and bananas. I made a few different recipes for the experiments: boiled banana with and without peel, mashed uncooked banana, mashed rotten mango, mashed mango peel, orange juice, and orange juice concentrate (as well as cassava porridge as a control). Then, I used the charcoal briquetter and some charcoal powder and made a briquette with each binder and left them out in the sun to dry. Unfortunately, most of the best results were from using valuable products like boiled banana without peel or mango juice (technically, there are surplus mangoes in this area, but that's not common in many of the areas I've tried charcoal projects) or the orange juice.
But I was not about to give up. When I boiled the banana peel, I saw that it had made a somewhat sticky liquid, but by adding the stringy pieces of the peel it had become much weaker. So, in the interests of finding a method that also doesn't require boiling, I used a large mortar and pestle to crush the banana peel and poured water slowly to collect the residue that was coming out. (The process took some practice and there were a few times where I splashed banana peel juice in my face.) When I got rid of the solid part, I found that it was actually a fairly sticky liquid. I tried the same process with mango peel and discovered that it also looked pretty good.
My colleague David (a member of the Peace Corps Zambia staff) helped me out by diligently making lots of briquettes. We were not entirely thrilled by how popular the charcoal was with the flies, but once it dried, we found that it held together really well. We also started joking about charging a higher price for fish grilled over "fruit-infused charcoal". Maybe half-joking. I'm curious about whether the same would work for things like potato peels, but I feel like this is the start to a much more workable solution.
Friday, January 7, 2011
Appropriate Technology Workshop Part 1
After we arrived in Chipata (December 12th), I met everyone who was working on the workshop. Eric was in the car with me riding up, I met him at IDDS this summer and really enjoy working with him, he's a quiet guy, but everything that he says is incredibly insightful. Then I met Henry, a Peace Corps Zambia staff member who was at IDDS in 2009 and is a hard worker, strong leader and all-around great guy. When I went in, I met Kofi, a grad student at MIT whom I had exchanged lots of emails with and heard great things about, but never actually worked with. I saw my friend Bernard had already arrived and was seated with a man named David. David is another Peace Corps staffer, who is really funny and great to work with. After that, I saw Amy Smith, who is a major inspiration to me and who I am always thrilled to work with.
I was definitely impressed with the quality of the hotel. The room had a king sized bed (it might have been queen, but either way, it was enormous and soft), a TV, a refrigerator (which I immediately unplugged and never used), a fan, a really nice shower and even a coat rack. It was nice to be in a place that was very conducive to sleep.
The first morning we started our Training of Trainers (TOT) at the Peace Corps regional office. I met Mindy and Alex (short for Alexandra) who had been through a previous training that Amy and Kofi had done with Peace Corps Zambia and were helping to lead this program as well as Simon, another Peace Corps staff member who was based in Chipata and was incredibly helpful with everything that we were working on. We started with goals and expectations for the program and then went over our schedule and went over the details of the technologies that we would be working on and the sessions that we were running.
After lunch, we set to work putting together some technologies and setting up some demonstrations. Half the group started working on building a small brick kiln for making charcoal.
I was with the group that was setting up an IDE treadle pump, a TDAU diaphragm pump and an IDE drip irrigation kit. There was a nice deep well on the compound and we were worried that it was too deep, but the treadle pump managed to lift the water (approx 10 meters, though they're typically rated for about 7 meters), but the diaphragm pump couldn't bring it up that far, so we just used a basin of water for that one. It took a while to get the pumps working and to run the hose, but by the end of the day, we felt pretty accomplished.
I was not impressed with the food at the hotel, and I was a bit anxious about the cost, so I ran out and invested in some bread and peanut butter. I still wanted to be social, so I would go to the dining hall during the meal times and talk with people, but I think they were worried about me and I appreciated their concern. I was also a bit sun-burned, so I was rather low-energy as well.
The next day was more planning and a lot of effort trying to track down the necessary supplies. I worked to set up the Universal Nut Sheller and I found myself defending it to some skeptics who rejected everything about it outright as well as assembling a ram press and a screw press (for oil extraction). Bernard showed off a design that he had made for producing low-cost tubing for drip irrigation kits by sealing small strips of plastic. This provided a nice segway to an activity where we had to design a machine for cutting the plastic into strips of the appropriate size.
We paired off for the activity and I found myself with David. He seemed perplexed at first by the challenge, but as we started working, I could hear his brain firing on all cylinders. We put a groove into a block of wood with a blade at the end so that we could run the plastic through. We didn't have a terribly outside-the-box design, but we were pretty happy with our result and David spent a lot of time talking about how excited he was to be designing a new technology. He spent a lot of time bantering with Henry since they're from rival tribes, and we all jokingly joined in the fun.
After that, we set up the drip irrigation kit and admired the garden out back. It was clear that the whole yard had been a trash heap and one of the Peace Corps Volunteers in the area had led a program to turn it into a demonstration plot for raising crops and controlling erosion. Then we did a bit of show-and-tell. We were impressed by the mud and brick kiln that they had built and were really excited to see it in action.
Photo Credit: All pictures taken by Alexandra Chen using Amy Smith's camera
I was definitely impressed with the quality of the hotel. The room had a king sized bed (it might have been queen, but either way, it was enormous and soft), a TV, a refrigerator (which I immediately unplugged and never used), a fan, a really nice shower and even a coat rack. It was nice to be in a place that was very conducive to sleep.
The first morning we started our Training of Trainers (TOT) at the Peace Corps regional office. I met Mindy and Alex (short for Alexandra) who had been through a previous training that Amy and Kofi had done with Peace Corps Zambia and were helping to lead this program as well as Simon, another Peace Corps staff member who was based in Chipata and was incredibly helpful with everything that we were working on. We started with goals and expectations for the program and then went over our schedule and went over the details of the technologies that we would be working on and the sessions that we were running.
After lunch, we set to work putting together some technologies and setting up some demonstrations. Half the group started working on building a small brick kiln for making charcoal.
David showing off the kiln
I was with the group that was setting up an IDE treadle pump, a TDAU diaphragm pump and an IDE drip irrigation kit. There was a nice deep well on the compound and we were worried that it was too deep, but the treadle pump managed to lift the water (approx 10 meters, though they're typically rated for about 7 meters), but the diaphragm pump couldn't bring it up that far, so we just used a basin of water for that one. It took a while to get the pumps working and to run the hose, but by the end of the day, we felt pretty accomplished.
IDE Treadle Pump
TDAU Diaphragm Pump
IDE Drip Irrigation Kit in Peace Corps garden
I was not impressed with the food at the hotel, and I was a bit anxious about the cost, so I ran out and invested in some bread and peanut butter. I still wanted to be social, so I would go to the dining hall during the meal times and talk with people, but I think they were worried about me and I appreciated their concern. I was also a bit sun-burned, so I was rather low-energy as well.
The next day was more planning and a lot of effort trying to track down the necessary supplies. I worked to set up the Universal Nut Sheller and I found myself defending it to some skeptics who rejected everything about it outright as well as assembling a ram press and a screw press (for oil extraction). Bernard showed off a design that he had made for producing low-cost tubing for drip irrigation kits by sealing small strips of plastic. This provided a nice segway to an activity where we had to design a machine for cutting the plastic into strips of the appropriate size.
Screw Press
Ram Press (also called Yenga Press in Zambia)
We paired off for the activity and I found myself with David. He seemed perplexed at first by the challenge, but as we started working, I could hear his brain firing on all cylinders. We put a groove into a block of wood with a blade at the end so that we could run the plastic through. We didn't have a terribly outside-the-box design, but we were pretty happy with our result and David spent a lot of time talking about how excited he was to be designing a new technology. He spent a lot of time bantering with Henry since they're from rival tribes, and we all jokingly joined in the fun.
After that, we set up the drip irrigation kit and admired the garden out back. It was clear that the whole yard had been a trash heap and one of the Peace Corps Volunteers in the area had led a program to turn it into a demonstration plot for raising crops and controlling erosion. Then we did a bit of show-and-tell. We were impressed by the mud and brick kiln that they had built and were really excited to see it in action.
Photo Credit: All pictures taken by Alexandra Chen using Amy Smith's camera
Sunday, January 2, 2011
2010 in Hindsight
2010 was a big improvement on 2009. I was a lot happier and I felt like I recovered from some of the stresses I experienced during my Peace Corps service. I completely gave up cigarettes (I wasn't smoking heavily in Peace Corps, but there were some days where one or two cigarettes was the only thing that would help me maintain balance) and I cut back significantly on alcohol (a few drinks every few months, as opposed to several drinks a couple times every few months). On the other hand, I read a small fraction of the number of books that I read in 2009 (though that was a pretty high baseline). I also had more positive interactions when I would meet up with people.
I got lots of stamps in my passport in 2009 as I spent time in 5 countries (including the US, where I spent time in 5 states). I made lots of new friends and started work on a few new exciting projects (and I was really happy to rejoin the IDDS team). My work at GCS has been really rewarding and its nice to be part of a team where people communicate with one another and change can happen. Don't get me wrong, I missed the network that I left when I ended my Peace Corps service, but there is absolutely no doubt in my mind that it was the right decision for me to leave and I'm glad that I was able to work with the program after leaving.
2010 put me on a really positive track and I'm hoping to carry that over into 2011. Still trying to figure out my resolutions for 2011 (I succeeded in my goal of giving up cigarettes last year), and I'm open to suggestions...
I got lots of stamps in my passport in 2009 as I spent time in 5 countries (including the US, where I spent time in 5 states). I made lots of new friends and started work on a few new exciting projects (and I was really happy to rejoin the IDDS team). My work at GCS has been really rewarding and its nice to be part of a team where people communicate with one another and change can happen. Don't get me wrong, I missed the network that I left when I ended my Peace Corps service, but there is absolutely no doubt in my mind that it was the right decision for me to leave and I'm glad that I was able to work with the program after leaving.
2010 put me on a really positive track and I'm hoping to carry that over into 2011. Still trying to figure out my resolutions for 2011 (I succeeded in my goal of giving up cigarettes last year), and I'm open to suggestions...
Saturday, December 18, 2010
Traveling to Zambia
On Friday (the 10th) at 5:30 AM, Jodie dropped me off at the bus stop for my trip to Zambia. In typical fashion, we had to swing by the office on the way to grab a few things before heading to the bus stop. The bus left at 5:50 to begin the interminable journey. I was up until 2 packing and tying up loose ends for work, so I slept a healthy amount on the ride. I also brought a 700 page book and made a healthy dent in that. I grabbed some snacks at some of the stops along the way (it's nice traveling during fruit season so that there's an alternative to the over-priced heavily fried foods on offer) and was surprised to see glass bottles of Mountain Dew (Pepsi is a common sight, but this was the first time I've seen Mountain Dew in glass--it seemed unnaturally classy for Mountain Dew). The bus arrived in Mbeya at 11:45 PM (the first time I've had the trip take less than 18 hours). I found an all night grill and grabbed a bite before walking around town (down some dark abandoned roads) to find a hotel.
I slept wonderfully and struggled to pull myself out of bed for an early start. I decided that since I was slow, it made sense to wait for the shops to open at 9 AM so that I could exchange my Tanzanian shillings for Zambian kwacha before the border (where the hawkers offer egregiously unfair prices). Then I hopped on a small bus headed to the border (the Tanzanian border town is Tunduma). After 2 hours, we hit a huge traffic build up about 2 km from the border, so I just decided to get out and walk to the border (I wasn't carrying a sheller in my luggage this time around, so it was much easier to move around). It was a pretty uneventful border crossing, though I have to say that the Zambian entry form was one of my favorites. The top asked for Date d'Entree which it translated as Date of Exit. Also, in filling out the year, it prompted you with 19__. But it was a refreshingly easy crossing.
Across in Zambia, I was in a town called Nakonde. I bought a bus ticket and walked around a bit. I bought a sim card and walked around a bit to survey. The market was nice, though I was surprised to see almost no fruit on offer (so there were plenty of tomatoes, but that's only technically a fruit--I'm not sure I can recall any markets I've visited where I didn't see any bananas). I decided to wait on the bus. I attempted to learn a little Nyanja (one of the main languages of Zambia), tried to nap, read more of my book and paced quite a bit. After 5 hours, the bus finally set off (it was 4:30 PM at this point because of the time change when I entered Zambia).
As I quickly discovered, the seats on this bus were about two inches narrower than the width of my shoulders. And to compound matters, there were people standing in the aisles, which meant that as they leaned into the rows, we were all squished even more (though next to their plight, I certainly can't complain). It became dark pretty quickly, so I couldn't read anymore. There were lights for each seat, but they cut the power to them, so I played around with my phone and tried to catch a nap. Unfortunately, my neighbor kept sleeping in the most unneighborly fashion. At times he would put his hands behind his head so that his elbow was resting on my back if I was leaning forward or his elbow was jostling against my temple if I hazarded to lean back. I could feel my stomach revolting against my travel diet and the travel stress, but there wasn't really anything I could do at that point.
We pulled into Lusaka at 7:40 AM and after running to the toilets at the bus stop, I grabbed a taxi and had breakfast with some friends before setting off at 11 AM for Chipata, which was my final destination. This time we were riding in the back of a Peace Corps vehicle with a lot of gear, so it was less comfortable than the two Tanzanian buses, though definitely a huge improvement over my bus into Lusaka. We rolled into the guest house just after 7:30 PM on Sunday and I was thrilled that I had finally arrived.
So, to summarize the 63 hours qualitatively:
5 vehicles and just under 44 hours on the road
49,000 shillings and 145,000 kwacha in bus fare (about $62)
2 stamps and 1 visa in my passport
350 pages and 17 Economist articles read
Way too many calories and way too few vitamins in my meals
About 10 hours of sleep (not much of it was good sleep)
1 realization that my body can't take much more of this kind of travel
Anyway, there's a lot going on here and I'm slightly too busy to write about it, so by the end of the year, I'm probably going to put up a ton of posts (hopefully with lots of pictures).
I slept wonderfully and struggled to pull myself out of bed for an early start. I decided that since I was slow, it made sense to wait for the shops to open at 9 AM so that I could exchange my Tanzanian shillings for Zambian kwacha before the border (where the hawkers offer egregiously unfair prices). Then I hopped on a small bus headed to the border (the Tanzanian border town is Tunduma). After 2 hours, we hit a huge traffic build up about 2 km from the border, so I just decided to get out and walk to the border (I wasn't carrying a sheller in my luggage this time around, so it was much easier to move around). It was a pretty uneventful border crossing, though I have to say that the Zambian entry form was one of my favorites. The top asked for Date d'Entree which it translated as Date of Exit. Also, in filling out the year, it prompted you with 19__. But it was a refreshingly easy crossing.
Across in Zambia, I was in a town called Nakonde. I bought a bus ticket and walked around a bit. I bought a sim card and walked around a bit to survey. The market was nice, though I was surprised to see almost no fruit on offer (so there were plenty of tomatoes, but that's only technically a fruit--I'm not sure I can recall any markets I've visited where I didn't see any bananas). I decided to wait on the bus. I attempted to learn a little Nyanja (one of the main languages of Zambia), tried to nap, read more of my book and paced quite a bit. After 5 hours, the bus finally set off (it was 4:30 PM at this point because of the time change when I entered Zambia).
As I quickly discovered, the seats on this bus were about two inches narrower than the width of my shoulders. And to compound matters, there were people standing in the aisles, which meant that as they leaned into the rows, we were all squished even more (though next to their plight, I certainly can't complain). It became dark pretty quickly, so I couldn't read anymore. There were lights for each seat, but they cut the power to them, so I played around with my phone and tried to catch a nap. Unfortunately, my neighbor kept sleeping in the most unneighborly fashion. At times he would put his hands behind his head so that his elbow was resting on my back if I was leaning forward or his elbow was jostling against my temple if I hazarded to lean back. I could feel my stomach revolting against my travel diet and the travel stress, but there wasn't really anything I could do at that point.
We pulled into Lusaka at 7:40 AM and after running to the toilets at the bus stop, I grabbed a taxi and had breakfast with some friends before setting off at 11 AM for Chipata, which was my final destination. This time we were riding in the back of a Peace Corps vehicle with a lot of gear, so it was less comfortable than the two Tanzanian buses, though definitely a huge improvement over my bus into Lusaka. We rolled into the guest house just after 7:30 PM on Sunday and I was thrilled that I had finally arrived.
So, to summarize the 63 hours qualitatively:
5 vehicles and just under 44 hours on the road
49,000 shillings and 145,000 kwacha in bus fare (about $62)
2 stamps and 1 visa in my passport
350 pages and 17 Economist articles read
Way too many calories and way too few vitamins in my meals
About 10 hours of sleep (not much of it was good sleep)
1 realization that my body can't take much more of this kind of travel
Anyway, there's a lot going on here and I'm slightly too busy to write about it, so by the end of the year, I'm probably going to put up a ton of posts (hopefully with lots of pictures).
Thursday, November 25, 2010
Farewells in Kenya (Day 2)
I slept pretty well through the night, but I was woken up at one point as the mosquitoes were attacking and then I woke up early to see one person off. After that, I passed out until 11, when I was greeted by someone telling me that my friend Nick (he was the closest volunteer to me for most of my time in Peace Corps) had arrived a while ago and hadn't been able to reach anyone (we both had dead batteries on our phones).
We hurried over to meet Nick and had a bit of brunch. We wound up sitting at the restaurant for a few hours catching up and grading Nick's students' exams. I think Reuben learned a bit about education over here as he joined in the fun (nope, not being sarcastic, marking papers definitely made me a bit nostalgic). I was really impressed with some of Nick's students, and I think that his effort to help them improve really shows. I also had a Coke as we were grading, and as much as everyone says that Coca-Cola tastes the same wherever you buy it (with the exception of high-fructose corn syrup as opposed to sugar), I have to say that Kenyan Coke tastes better than Tanzanian Coke. Maybe it's my imagination? Maybe there's a bad bottler in Arusha?
After that, we decided to spend the afternoon at the pool, so we put on our shorts (close enough to swimsuits) and headed to the pool. It was really perfect weather, and the pool was a little small, but just big enough for diving. We swapped more stories, and I felt really happy when Nick told me that there was another volunteer who had raised similar issues to what I raised to Peace Corps Kenya about his work and they had given him permission to decrease his teaching load significantly and work on more secondary projects. I don't know all the details, but it's nice to know that the staff is trying to accommodate volunteers these days. It made me wonder how many more volunteers from my group would have stayed around had they been more supportive back then. Still, the important part is that attitudes have definitely changed.
After that, Nick had to get back to his site, so we tried to hurry back to the bus stand, but we couldn't find any vehicles heading that way, so we wound up walking most of the two kilometers (it was nice to talk more, but Nick was becoming more anxious about missing the last bus back to his site). We made it in time and Nick got home safely, which was nice. Then we ate a quick dinner and played more cards. Once again, it was after midnight and I decided to crash. Reuben headed out to the club and later reported that it had a decent scene for a Sunday night.
Reuben and I woke up the next morning, packed and hopped on the bus back to Arusha. The ride was pretty uneventful. I mostly read The Economist on my phone. As we passed through Maktau, I saw my old landlord Mr. Kori and noted that he was looking well. Then, we saw six elephants further down the road. At immigration, I was trying to get my permit stamped, but they told me that I will need to go to the immigration office in Arusha (a place where I don't have happy memories) to get it stamped and attached to my passport. However, above the stamp in my passport, they wrote "RR" for Returning Resident. Reuben and I made it back to Arusha without further event (although 17 hours on buses in less than 60 hours is making my spine increasingly unhappy) and then hopped on some motorcycle taxis and headed to the office to put in the last two hours of the workday.
We hurried over to meet Nick and had a bit of brunch. We wound up sitting at the restaurant for a few hours catching up and grading Nick's students' exams. I think Reuben learned a bit about education over here as he joined in the fun (nope, not being sarcastic, marking papers definitely made me a bit nostalgic). I was really impressed with some of Nick's students, and I think that his effort to help them improve really shows. I also had a Coke as we were grading, and as much as everyone says that Coca-Cola tastes the same wherever you buy it (with the exception of high-fructose corn syrup as opposed to sugar), I have to say that Kenyan Coke tastes better than Tanzanian Coke. Maybe it's my imagination? Maybe there's a bad bottler in Arusha?
After that, we decided to spend the afternoon at the pool, so we put on our shorts (close enough to swimsuits) and headed to the pool. It was really perfect weather, and the pool was a little small, but just big enough for diving. We swapped more stories, and I felt really happy when Nick told me that there was another volunteer who had raised similar issues to what I raised to Peace Corps Kenya about his work and they had given him permission to decrease his teaching load significantly and work on more secondary projects. I don't know all the details, but it's nice to know that the staff is trying to accommodate volunteers these days. It made me wonder how many more volunteers from my group would have stayed around had they been more supportive back then. Still, the important part is that attitudes have definitely changed.
After that, Nick had to get back to his site, so we tried to hurry back to the bus stand, but we couldn't find any vehicles heading that way, so we wound up walking most of the two kilometers (it was nice to talk more, but Nick was becoming more anxious about missing the last bus back to his site). We made it in time and Nick got home safely, which was nice. Then we ate a quick dinner and played more cards. Once again, it was after midnight and I decided to crash. Reuben headed out to the club and later reported that it had a decent scene for a Sunday night.
Reuben and I woke up the next morning, packed and hopped on the bus back to Arusha. The ride was pretty uneventful. I mostly read The Economist on my phone. As we passed through Maktau, I saw my old landlord Mr. Kori and noted that he was looking well. Then, we saw six elephants further down the road. At immigration, I was trying to get my permit stamped, but they told me that I will need to go to the immigration office in Arusha (a place where I don't have happy memories) to get it stamped and attached to my passport. However, above the stamp in my passport, they wrote "RR" for Returning Resident. Reuben and I made it back to Arusha without further event (although 17 hours on buses in less than 60 hours is making my spine increasingly unhappy) and then hopped on some motorcycle taxis and headed to the office to put in the last two hours of the workday.
Farewells in Kenya (Day 1)
Well, were I still a Peace Corps volunteer, I would be finishing up my service now and getting ready to complete my service (one of the volunteers from my group flew home yesterday, I believe). I took a different path, but I have a lot of friends who are in the wrap-up phase, so I wanted to go and say some farewells.
As usual, I had a few more loose ends than anticipated, and went back to the office after the Potluck on Saturday. I got back a little after 11 so that I could make sure to finish some work before leaving the country. I was working a bit slow, since I had gotten less than 4 hours of sleep the night before (IDDS meeting coupled with insomnia) and didn't finish until after 2. Even packing up was a slow process, so I didn't get home until 3.
At home I had to pack, which took longer than it should have, but then it's a rare trip where I leave with everything that I need. This time, I managed to leave with everything (most importantly, my new work permit, which I needed to get stamped at the border for it to take effect), and by the time I was all ready, I realized that if I went to sleep, I wouldn't wake up for the bus. So I took in a nice sunrise and Jodie drove Reuben and I to the bus station at 6:30. I also found out at that point that one of our friends in town had just died. He was young and full of life, and we will all miss him (and I think that's all that I'm going to say about that on here).
The bus ride was even less pleasant than I remembered. I slept on the Tanzanian side, but the road in Kenya (it's the one that passes through Maktau) was even more painful than I remembered. Reuben and I did see a giraffe at one point and a family of elephants. Maktau was pretty green, so I was happy that the rains have been better this year than they had been last year.
There were no problems leaving Tanzania, but entering Kenya*, the immigration officials did not want to make things easy for us. They tried to tell Reuben that his single entry visa did not allow him readmission (FALSE: Kenya no longer has multiple entry visas, but the visa is valid for re-entry so long as the visa holder has not left the East African Community, which Reuben had not), which meant that he would have to pay for another one. We convinced them that his visa was in fact valid, and as the official stamped the document, he looked up and asked "How are you going to compliment me?" I pushed Reuben out of the way before he could respond to this thinly veiled code for a bribe. I started by telling the official that I needed a visa, at which point he flipped through my passport and explained to me that my last visa was expired. I requested a transit visa, which is intended for people passing through Kenya for less than 72 hours (I was looking to stay under 48 hours) and costs $10 as opposed to $25 for the visa that allows you to stay for three months. The official explained to me that they don't have transit visas at that border crossing (a rather odd situation). He then reassured me that I would only need to pay $25, and pointed out to me that it is much harder for a Kenyan to obtain an American visa (I wholeheartedly agree with the statement, however, I'm pretty sure that that isn't actually my fault). Then his supervisor came over and asked what was going on. I once again requested a transit visa, and he told me that I was not eligible for one if I would be sleeping in the Kenya (this is certainly not the case, since you can get transit visas at the airport as long as you are planning to leave the country in the next 72 hours). I decided not to point out the inconsistency between their points and paid the $25 since the bus was waiting on me at that point. And in an act of ultimate pettiness, I stole their pen and I have decided to treasure this pen that I paid $15 for.
Anyway, the jostling all the way to Voi made me forget about all that and I was glad to see two volunteers when I arrived. Reuben and I dropped off our bags in the hotel and went to grab a bite to eat (we hadn't eaten anything all day, and it was 3 PM). After that, we caught up on everything a bit (I found out that the planned party was canceled because our host had recently had a family misfortune, and the attendance would have been dismal anyway) and discussed secondary projects (including charcoal, of course). At that point, one of the volunteers left, and another one showed up, so we were still four.
As the volunteer was leaving, I was giving him some GCS products (yep, making sales on vacation) and in the process, I managed to leave my key in the door. About half an hour later, I realized I didn't have my key and asked at the reception. They told me that someone was using my room and he (I think they meant he and his ladyfriend) would be done shortly. I was rather ambivalent, but the volunteer raised serious issue with the fact that they were renting the same room both by the night and by the hour (to be fair, I was an idiot for leaving my key in the door). As the time dragged on (it had been at least 45 minutes), the management agreed to give me a new room, and since they were low, they put me in a bigger room for the same price (the justification they gave when pressed was that they "thought he wouldn't take long in there"). I guess that worked out as win-win for everyone. The management was even considerate enough to remove my bags from the room and store them at the front desk (I was rather grateful for that, since nothing was stolen).
After that, we went to Fine Breeze, which is where we always used to go for some grilled meat in Voi. The wait is always unbearably long, so we wound up playing two hours of cards before the food came. The chicken was good, but the beef was pretty tough and fatty. I mostly ate the kamchumbari (think pico de gallo, but in this case, without hot pepper). Then we went and passed the time with more cards (cards were more in the background to the conversations) before we decided it was late enough to head out to a club. One person and I decided we were exhausted and opted to head back and crash (it was just after midnight, and I had gotten less than 7 hours of sleep over the past two nights). Reuben went out for some Saturday night clubbing and had a pretty late night.
* This is a great link for explaining how visa policy is supposed to be. However, that does not always match up with reality.
As usual, I had a few more loose ends than anticipated, and went back to the office after the Potluck on Saturday. I got back a little after 11 so that I could make sure to finish some work before leaving the country. I was working a bit slow, since I had gotten less than 4 hours of sleep the night before (IDDS meeting coupled with insomnia) and didn't finish until after 2. Even packing up was a slow process, so I didn't get home until 3.
At home I had to pack, which took longer than it should have, but then it's a rare trip where I leave with everything that I need. This time, I managed to leave with everything (most importantly, my new work permit, which I needed to get stamped at the border for it to take effect), and by the time I was all ready, I realized that if I went to sleep, I wouldn't wake up for the bus. So I took in a nice sunrise and Jodie drove Reuben and I to the bus station at 6:30. I also found out at that point that one of our friends in town had just died. He was young and full of life, and we will all miss him (and I think that's all that I'm going to say about that on here).
The bus ride was even less pleasant than I remembered. I slept on the Tanzanian side, but the road in Kenya (it's the one that passes through Maktau) was even more painful than I remembered. Reuben and I did see a giraffe at one point and a family of elephants. Maktau was pretty green, so I was happy that the rains have been better this year than they had been last year.
There were no problems leaving Tanzania, but entering Kenya*, the immigration officials did not want to make things easy for us. They tried to tell Reuben that his single entry visa did not allow him readmission (FALSE: Kenya no longer has multiple entry visas, but the visa is valid for re-entry so long as the visa holder has not left the East African Community, which Reuben had not), which meant that he would have to pay for another one. We convinced them that his visa was in fact valid, and as the official stamped the document, he looked up and asked "How are you going to compliment me?" I pushed Reuben out of the way before he could respond to this thinly veiled code for a bribe. I started by telling the official that I needed a visa, at which point he flipped through my passport and explained to me that my last visa was expired. I requested a transit visa, which is intended for people passing through Kenya for less than 72 hours (I was looking to stay under 48 hours) and costs $10 as opposed to $25 for the visa that allows you to stay for three months. The official explained to me that they don't have transit visas at that border crossing (a rather odd situation). He then reassured me that I would only need to pay $25, and pointed out to me that it is much harder for a Kenyan to obtain an American visa (I wholeheartedly agree with the statement, however, I'm pretty sure that that isn't actually my fault). Then his supervisor came over and asked what was going on. I once again requested a transit visa, and he told me that I was not eligible for one if I would be sleeping in the Kenya (this is certainly not the case, since you can get transit visas at the airport as long as you are planning to leave the country in the next 72 hours). I decided not to point out the inconsistency between their points and paid the $25 since the bus was waiting on me at that point. And in an act of ultimate pettiness, I stole their pen and I have decided to treasure this pen that I paid $15 for.
Anyway, the jostling all the way to Voi made me forget about all that and I was glad to see two volunteers when I arrived. Reuben and I dropped off our bags in the hotel and went to grab a bite to eat (we hadn't eaten anything all day, and it was 3 PM). After that, we caught up on everything a bit (I found out that the planned party was canceled because our host had recently had a family misfortune, and the attendance would have been dismal anyway) and discussed secondary projects (including charcoal, of course). At that point, one of the volunteers left, and another one showed up, so we were still four.
As the volunteer was leaving, I was giving him some GCS products (yep, making sales on vacation) and in the process, I managed to leave my key in the door. About half an hour later, I realized I didn't have my key and asked at the reception. They told me that someone was using my room and he (I think they meant he and his ladyfriend) would be done shortly. I was rather ambivalent, but the volunteer raised serious issue with the fact that they were renting the same room both by the night and by the hour (to be fair, I was an idiot for leaving my key in the door). As the time dragged on (it had been at least 45 minutes), the management agreed to give me a new room, and since they were low, they put me in a bigger room for the same price (the justification they gave when pressed was that they "thought he wouldn't take long in there"). I guess that worked out as win-win for everyone. The management was even considerate enough to remove my bags from the room and store them at the front desk (I was rather grateful for that, since nothing was stolen).
After that, we went to Fine Breeze, which is where we always used to go for some grilled meat in Voi. The wait is always unbearably long, so we wound up playing two hours of cards before the food came. The chicken was good, but the beef was pretty tough and fatty. I mostly ate the kamchumbari (think pico de gallo, but in this case, without hot pepper). Then we went and passed the time with more cards (cards were more in the background to the conversations) before we decided it was late enough to head out to a club. One person and I decided we were exhausted and opted to head back and crash (it was just after midnight, and I had gotten less than 7 hours of sleep over the past two nights). Reuben went out for some Saturday night clubbing and had a pretty late night.
* This is a great link for explaining how visa policy is supposed to be. However, that does not always match up with reality.
Saturday, November 13, 2010
Two year anniversary
Two years ago today, I arrived at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport in Nairobi with 41 other Peace Corps trainees.
When I started this blog, the plan was that it would last 26 months and then I wasn't sure what would happen after that. I figured that this two year post would be the beginning of the end. Things haven't exactly gone according to plan.
Obviously, leaving Peace Corps after 14 months was a big part of that. But that's actually been a relatively minor change, since most of what I've been doing in 2010 feels like how I would have wanted my Peace Corps service to run. I guess the biggest change has been my expectations. (In case you're wondering about physical changes, I've returned to a healthy weight, so the biggest change there is probably the decrease in how much hair I have on my head.)
A lot of people join Peace Corps and other similar programs expecting to change the world and leave their lasting mark on a community. I wasn't so ambitious, which is not to say that I was hoping for insignificance, but rather, I figured that the biggest changes would be in my personal development and any benefits accrued by the community would be icing on the cake.
In each stage of my life, I feel like I became a wholly new person and I figured that the sequence would continue. And in a way it has. But I am not sure that I would almost call it personal regression, rather than personal development. I've been hardened by a lot of my experiences here. Some have created unhealthy levels of bitterness which I would love to move past. It's also helped me to revert to some of my more introverted tendencies (I have spent a lot of my life alternating between introversion and extroversion). Sure, I have plenty of adventures with my friends, but I spend much more time wanting to be alone than to socialize. I have more difficulty trusting people these days. My math skills (math used to be one of my favorite hobbies. Yep, I'm a big nerd.) have plummeted, and my Spanish and French are pretty weak these days (although on the flip side, my reading, writing and Kiswahili skills are probably at their strongest ever).
Well, I haven't exactly painted a pretty rosy picture so far, but then, many of my other posts are looking through rose-colored glasses, so I tend to use these reflective posts to look at larger trends. I wouldn't trade my experiences and lessons learned over the past two years for anything. It's definitely instilled a bit of patience in me (not much, but at least it's a start). I also worked out most of my argumentative tendencies (though sometimes those bubble just below the surface). And most importantly, I've built some really important friendships, with people who I probably never would have met or become close with were it not for our shared experiences over here.
At this point, I can't really say if I'll be over here for one more year or five more years or longer or shorter. However, I do know that I've barely scratched the surface of what I can learn out here.
When I started this blog, the plan was that it would last 26 months and then I wasn't sure what would happen after that. I figured that this two year post would be the beginning of the end. Things haven't exactly gone according to plan.
Obviously, leaving Peace Corps after 14 months was a big part of that. But that's actually been a relatively minor change, since most of what I've been doing in 2010 feels like how I would have wanted my Peace Corps service to run. I guess the biggest change has been my expectations. (In case you're wondering about physical changes, I've returned to a healthy weight, so the biggest change there is probably the decrease in how much hair I have on my head.)
A lot of people join Peace Corps and other similar programs expecting to change the world and leave their lasting mark on a community. I wasn't so ambitious, which is not to say that I was hoping for insignificance, but rather, I figured that the biggest changes would be in my personal development and any benefits accrued by the community would be icing on the cake.
In each stage of my life, I feel like I became a wholly new person and I figured that the sequence would continue. And in a way it has. But I am not sure that I would almost call it personal regression, rather than personal development. I've been hardened by a lot of my experiences here. Some have created unhealthy levels of bitterness which I would love to move past. It's also helped me to revert to some of my more introverted tendencies (I have spent a lot of my life alternating between introversion and extroversion). Sure, I have plenty of adventures with my friends, but I spend much more time wanting to be alone than to socialize. I have more difficulty trusting people these days. My math skills (math used to be one of my favorite hobbies. Yep, I'm a big nerd.) have plummeted, and my Spanish and French are pretty weak these days (although on the flip side, my reading, writing and Kiswahili skills are probably at their strongest ever).
Well, I haven't exactly painted a pretty rosy picture so far, but then, many of my other posts are looking through rose-colored glasses, so I tend to use these reflective posts to look at larger trends. I wouldn't trade my experiences and lessons learned over the past two years for anything. It's definitely instilled a bit of patience in me (not much, but at least it's a start). I also worked out most of my argumentative tendencies (though sometimes those bubble just below the surface). And most importantly, I've built some really important friendships, with people who I probably never would have met or become close with were it not for our shared experiences over here.
At this point, I can't really say if I'll be over here for one more year or five more years or longer or shorter. However, I do know that I've barely scratched the surface of what I can learn out here.
Friday, September 24, 2010
Ghosts at the Prom
Okay, second half of my Nairobi adventure. This one is going to be a long one, I expect.
Tuesday morning, I was a bit slow moving, but it helps to pace myself in Nairobi. I started by heading down to Parklands (an area of Nairobi near City Centre) to try to track down some people. I visited the office that had flooded and saw the damage and the fact that none of the staff was in and quickly moved on. Fortunately, my next meeting was just down the street. Unfortunately, I didn't realize this right away, because the streets often feel like a maze (I lived in Boston for four years, which felt pretty similar), but after asking a half dozen people for directions, I found the building. I had a nice talk with the staff at TechnoServe, and they seem interested in working with us moving forward. Then I headed to Barclays to exchange my Tanzanian shillings for Kenyan shillings. I was waiting in line behind some British gentleman who had been in Nairobi for some time, and felt that he was entitled to lots of special treatment. After twenty minutes of him harassing the teller and trying to draw sympathy from me for his plight (gee whiz, what a poor spoiled ex-pat) I gave up and left the bank with my dwindling supply of Kenyan money. I ran to the store and bought a juice before heading to my next meeting.
I told the matatu conductor to drop me at Afralti and he agreed. I don't remember that part of Nairobi as well, so I got out where he told me to alight. And then I discovered I was about 1 km down the road from where I wanted to be (the matatu was headed in that direction, but apparently the conductors on that route don't know their stops). I walked (with the sheller set on my back) to my destination and showed up sweaty and disheveled. As I walked in, I was greeted by some Peace Corps staff members who asked if I needed anything for my session. I decided that my first priority was to clean myself up a bit and regain my composure. Then I started chatting up a few of the new volunteers and managed to convince one of them to let me use his computer. As I was doing the set-up, he was getting really excited about my talk.
Meanwhile, I was frantically editing my presentation on Appropriate Technology (Jackie and I had written it together in April 2009--with a heavy dose of inspiration from Amy Smith--but I hadn't looked at it since then) as the room was filling up. I didn't feel like it was my best presentation (I don't think I fully regained my composure), but there was some definite interest from the audience and I had a nice Q&A session before handing it over to the next presenter. I stuck around a bit longer and added some files to one volunteer's computer of various manuals I have accumulated over time (these will likely be quickly spread around the Peace Corps Kenya network). I had a few volunteers come up to me afterwards and tell me that I had given the best session in their week and a half of training (one volunteer used the phrase "only good session"), and they were pretty excited about GCS's work, and several volunteers were wondering where they could order a machine.
Then I chatted with a high school friend who is in the new group of volunteers and we bonded about the Peace Corps experience. As we were talking, one of the other volunteers invited me to the prom-themed party that they were having on Wednesday night. I told them that I would do my best to make an appearance. I also spent a while talking to a Peace Corps staff member about how much staff has improved what they're doing since the debacle with my group (currently, 24 of the original 42 volunteers are still in the program, compared to the group that came a year after us, which has not lost a single volunteer). Then I realized that it was getting late, so I hurried back to Upper Hill (with a stop at a currency exchange that gave me a much lousier rate). At that point, I realized that I had forgotten to eat the entire day (I had a tiny muffin for breakfast and 2 liters of juice the rest of the day). I wolfed down two meals in quick succession and crashed by 10 PM.
Then, I was awake again at midnight. My brain wasn't feeling sharp enough for much reading, so I sent a few emails from my phone. Then I went to spend some time with the puppies. Mostly, I spent my time tossing and turning. It was 4 AM before I fell back asleep (I also abandoned hope of sleeping in the bed, and opted to curl up on the floor in the corner). Wednesday morning wound up being rather slow moving.
I took care of a couple of personal errands in the morning before setting off in the afternoon for Kariobangi, on the eastern extremity of Nairobi. The trip wound up taking an hour and a half. Part of the issue was that the matatu conductor wouldn't let me out where I asked (he alleged he was concerned about my safety) and then drove around making fifteen more minutes of stops before heading back and leaving me off 100 meters closer than where I had previously asked and demanding a tip for "helping" me out. I gave him 15 shillings, which was all the change I had on hand (also half the cost of the ride) and then he pocketed it and told the driver that I hadn't given him any kind of tip.
I walked through a small market to the KickStart technology facility (my previous visit is documented here). I really enjoyed my meeting this time. I talked with Alan, who runs the technology work and led development of the small-scale pump they have (much more affordable than their medium-scale pumps). We talked a lot about manufacturing and design and he was terribly sympathetic to the fact that I was showing up 45 minutes late. Then he dropped me a bit closer to town as he went home for the day.
I had to take two matatus (and walk through a moderately sketchy part of town) to make it back to where the volunteers were having their prom. When I arrived (completely underdressed), I found that the volunteers were on a field trip, but one of them had stayed behind, so we talked for a while about business and development (he had joined a very large company in its start-up phase, and was apparently neighbors with a prominent CEO before coming to Kenya). He seemed to be impressed with our work at GCS and I was blown away by his background and all the work he is already accomplishing in Kenya.
As I walked around Afralti, I thought back to my previous trip to the compound back in January of 2009 for swearing in. There were two locations in the dorm where I had physical reactions as the past came back to me and I was haunted by some of the volunteers who were administratively separated (the Peace Corps equivalent of getting fired) from my group right before swearing in. I thought back to packing up a friend's room faster than I've ever packed in my life because it was apparently imperative that she leave the country in the blink of an eye. I remembered talking to another friend and coaching her on a conversation that she was supposed to have with the country director, only to find out that the "conversation" was another staff member handing her a letter saying that she was being sent home, no questions asked. I've always had trouble letting things go, I guess.
Fortunately, the prom was a wonderful affair. I was amazed by how well-dressed everyone else was, though plenty of people were sporting flip-flops. They were mostly playing American music from the last 15 years, but I kept sneaking in and putting on Swahili music (and P-Square)It was really nice to socialize with old friends (some older volunteers who were around from my time in the program) and new friends. And by the time 3:30 AM rolled around, I was sitting with some Kenyans and a couple of the older volunteers and discussing regional geo-politics.
I made sure to thank the prom organizers for a wonderful time. I can now say that I have happy memories at Afralti, which was certainly not the case before.
Tuesday morning, I was a bit slow moving, but it helps to pace myself in Nairobi. I started by heading down to Parklands (an area of Nairobi near City Centre) to try to track down some people. I visited the office that had flooded and saw the damage and the fact that none of the staff was in and quickly moved on. Fortunately, my next meeting was just down the street. Unfortunately, I didn't realize this right away, because the streets often feel like a maze (I lived in Boston for four years, which felt pretty similar), but after asking a half dozen people for directions, I found the building. I had a nice talk with the staff at TechnoServe, and they seem interested in working with us moving forward. Then I headed to Barclays to exchange my Tanzanian shillings for Kenyan shillings. I was waiting in line behind some British gentleman who had been in Nairobi for some time, and felt that he was entitled to lots of special treatment. After twenty minutes of him harassing the teller and trying to draw sympathy from me for his plight (gee whiz, what a poor spoiled ex-pat) I gave up and left the bank with my dwindling supply of Kenyan money. I ran to the store and bought a juice before heading to my next meeting.
I told the matatu conductor to drop me at Afralti and he agreed. I don't remember that part of Nairobi as well, so I got out where he told me to alight. And then I discovered I was about 1 km down the road from where I wanted to be (the matatu was headed in that direction, but apparently the conductors on that route don't know their stops). I walked (with the sheller set on my back) to my destination and showed up sweaty and disheveled. As I walked in, I was greeted by some Peace Corps staff members who asked if I needed anything for my session. I decided that my first priority was to clean myself up a bit and regain my composure. Then I started chatting up a few of the new volunteers and managed to convince one of them to let me use his computer. As I was doing the set-up, he was getting really excited about my talk.
Meanwhile, I was frantically editing my presentation on Appropriate Technology (Jackie and I had written it together in April 2009--with a heavy dose of inspiration from Amy Smith--but I hadn't looked at it since then) as the room was filling up. I didn't feel like it was my best presentation (I don't think I fully regained my composure), but there was some definite interest from the audience and I had a nice Q&A session before handing it over to the next presenter. I stuck around a bit longer and added some files to one volunteer's computer of various manuals I have accumulated over time (these will likely be quickly spread around the Peace Corps Kenya network). I had a few volunteers come up to me afterwards and tell me that I had given the best session in their week and a half of training (one volunteer used the phrase "only good session"), and they were pretty excited about GCS's work, and several volunteers were wondering where they could order a machine.
Then I chatted with a high school friend who is in the new group of volunteers and we bonded about the Peace Corps experience. As we were talking, one of the other volunteers invited me to the prom-themed party that they were having on Wednesday night. I told them that I would do my best to make an appearance. I also spent a while talking to a Peace Corps staff member about how much staff has improved what they're doing since the debacle with my group (currently, 24 of the original 42 volunteers are still in the program, compared to the group that came a year after us, which has not lost a single volunteer). Then I realized that it was getting late, so I hurried back to Upper Hill (with a stop at a currency exchange that gave me a much lousier rate). At that point, I realized that I had forgotten to eat the entire day (I had a tiny muffin for breakfast and 2 liters of juice the rest of the day). I wolfed down two meals in quick succession and crashed by 10 PM.
Then, I was awake again at midnight. My brain wasn't feeling sharp enough for much reading, so I sent a few emails from my phone. Then I went to spend some time with the puppies. Mostly, I spent my time tossing and turning. It was 4 AM before I fell back asleep (I also abandoned hope of sleeping in the bed, and opted to curl up on the floor in the corner). Wednesday morning wound up being rather slow moving.
I took care of a couple of personal errands in the morning before setting off in the afternoon for Kariobangi, on the eastern extremity of Nairobi. The trip wound up taking an hour and a half. Part of the issue was that the matatu conductor wouldn't let me out where I asked (he alleged he was concerned about my safety) and then drove around making fifteen more minutes of stops before heading back and leaving me off 100 meters closer than where I had previously asked and demanding a tip for "helping" me out. I gave him 15 shillings, which was all the change I had on hand (also half the cost of the ride) and then he pocketed it and told the driver that I hadn't given him any kind of tip.
I walked through a small market to the KickStart technology facility (my previous visit is documented here). I really enjoyed my meeting this time. I talked with Alan, who runs the technology work and led development of the small-scale pump they have (much more affordable than their medium-scale pumps). We talked a lot about manufacturing and design and he was terribly sympathetic to the fact that I was showing up 45 minutes late. Then he dropped me a bit closer to town as he went home for the day.
I had to take two matatus (and walk through a moderately sketchy part of town) to make it back to where the volunteers were having their prom. When I arrived (completely underdressed), I found that the volunteers were on a field trip, but one of them had stayed behind, so we talked for a while about business and development (he had joined a very large company in its start-up phase, and was apparently neighbors with a prominent CEO before coming to Kenya). He seemed to be impressed with our work at GCS and I was blown away by his background and all the work he is already accomplishing in Kenya.
As I walked around Afralti, I thought back to my previous trip to the compound back in January of 2009 for swearing in. There were two locations in the dorm where I had physical reactions as the past came back to me and I was haunted by some of the volunteers who were administratively separated (the Peace Corps equivalent of getting fired) from my group right before swearing in. I thought back to packing up a friend's room faster than I've ever packed in my life because it was apparently imperative that she leave the country in the blink of an eye. I remembered talking to another friend and coaching her on a conversation that she was supposed to have with the country director, only to find out that the "conversation" was another staff member handing her a letter saying that she was being sent home, no questions asked. I've always had trouble letting things go, I guess.
Fortunately, the prom was a wonderful affair. I was amazed by how well-dressed everyone else was, though plenty of people were sporting flip-flops. They were mostly playing American music from the last 15 years, but I kept sneaking in and putting on Swahili music (and P-Square)It was really nice to socialize with old friends (some older volunteers who were around from my time in the program) and new friends. And by the time 3:30 AM rolled around, I was sitting with some Kenyans and a couple of the older volunteers and discussing regional geo-politics.
I made sure to thank the prom organizers for a wonderful time. I can now say that I have happy memories at Afralti, which was certainly not the case before.
Sunday, August 29, 2010
Maker Faire Africa and other Nairobi Adventures
On Wednesday, I traveled to Nairobi for Maker Faire Africa. Jodie had only arrived on Monday night, and we barely scratched the surface of catching up on everything (in spite of the mountains of emails we exchanged while we were traveling) before I had to leave again.
I arrived in Nairobi in the afternoon and had a quick meeting with a prospective customer in City Centre before scurrying off to the Industrial Area. I wanted to check one or two more things off my to-do list, but I was pretty exhausted from 7 hours on the bus (I think they made the road bumpier in the past week) so I just grabbed a quick bite and was asleep by 8 PM.
On Thursday, I headed to the Peace Corps office to check in with a couple of people. I had a nice conversation with Serah, who was always incredibly helpful during my Peace Corps service before going to say hi to Mary in the Medical office. She was also friendly and we struck up a conversation about maize grinders (a topic I'm researching for GCS), and she had some useful insights. Then I ran over to the motor-pool and talked to GG (I can't remember his real name anymore, since everyone just refers to him by his initials), who gave me directions to navigate the maze that is Nairobi and was entertaining, as always.
My first stop was the Kenya Agricultural Research Institute or KARI. I was on the matatu, and I saw the building, and I was surprised that GG had given me wrong directions. But I hopped out and went to the main building (there were several on the campus) and asked for the maize specialist. They asked me to sit and wait for the director to help me. After 40 minutes, the director came and told me that I was in the wrong building. Apparently, GG's directions were completely accurate, and I had simply gone to the wrong building (a soil institute--though I'm not sure why the first three people I spoke to couldn't have mentioned that they don't do any crop work there). So I hopped on another matatu and got to the right building. Unfortunately, the director wasn't there, but I had an in depth conversation with one of his research assistants on seed varieties and farm sizes around Kenya. He also directed me to a rice specialist so that I could learn about a bicycle powered rice thresher being developed by some Korean development workers. Definitely an interesting project.
After that, I traveled to CNFA, which is one of our partners in Tanzania to meet with their Kenyan administration. He mentioned that he had just been working on the intractable problem of maize shelling and was trying to figure out what sort of technology was available for farmers. Talk about fortunate timing. He helped me understand the system for working with agro-dealers in Kenya (it requires coordinating with CNFA, AGMARK and KENADA, for a start) and gave me some contact information for some interesting groups. He made a good point about thinking about COMESA (the COmmon Market for Eastern and Southern Africa, but it's an economic confederation in eastern and southern Africa; East Africa=Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi while COMESA=East Africa + Ethiopia, Zambia, Malawi and other nations), which makes sense for scale.
At that point, I wanted to meet with a few more people, but Nairobi rush hour had other ideas. It took me about an hour to travel the 4 miles back to City Centre, so I opted to get myself sorted for Maker Faire. I checked into the hotel and wrote a bunch of emails on my phone (I really missed my phone while I was in the states) before crashing.
I woke up early the next morning to finish up everything before the Faire. I ran to the bus station to pick up the GCS machines that had been sent for the occasion, only to be told that they hadn't arrived. It was only after arguing with several employees there who were trying to eat their breakfast that they found the machines. The driver couldn't find the bike shop (it probably would have helped if I had given him the correct street), so I had him drop me back at the hotel. I grabbed two machines and began asking around for the shop (which was a much better landmark than the non-existent street I had written down) and found that it was only five minutes walk to get there. The first trip I was hauling 50 pounds and wishing that I had the arm-strength that I used to have. Then came the 70 pound load. I was pretty sore, and it was only 9 AM. Then I had to wait around at the bike shop so that they could fix up a bike (they were supposed to have that ready when I came), which was another 20 minutes of them tightening bolts that I would soon be loosening to assemble the machine. Finally, the bike was ready, but as I started riding, I realized that I didn't have rope to secure the cargo to the back rack, so I had to walk it to the University for Maker Faire.
I arrived slightly late, but found that I was just in time for the event's beginning. I spent the first hour of the Faire assembling the sheller and bike before I was ready to start presenting at my booth. Fortunately, the weather was unpleasant, so there wasn't much traffic at the start. As the day wore on, though, more and more people were coming, and I was having trouble talking to everyone. I had to switch back and forth between Kiswahili and English while talking to different customers (which led to a slight problem when I was talking to one of the event organizers, and he just looked blankly at me and said "I'm sorry, I don't understand Kiswahili"--I hadn't even realized that I wasn't speaking English until he told me). Fortunately, Bernard arrived at 3 PM and tweaked the set-up a bit so that it ran better (we didn't have maize anyway, so we relied on video, which actually made a really compelling case--a few people weren't convinced when I assured them that we hadn't doctored the footage) and he helped me with talking to customers. We actually got lots of positive feedback, which was nice. Most people just wanted to know when they would be able to buy one (definitely excited about GCS selling them in Kenya!) and how much the cost would be (their jaws always dropped when I told them that it would be under 5000 Kenyan shillings or about $60).
The other wrinkle in the day was that it was the signing of the new Kenyan constitution (sorry, no link--that's a pretty hefty document, and I'm not sure they've moved it online yet). Most of the government and a large group of foreign dignitaries were just a few miles away, along with an enormous crowd. It was definitely an exciting day, since the old constitution had been to the detriment of many citizens and the new one looks to create a better system of government for the wananchi (people of the country). I was actually super-excited to be so close to the momentous event and was glad that it had all turned out so well (though, of course, with a few unsavory characters in attendance). However, the parades and honking horns weren't the most conducive to my sleep, but in this case, I was happy for the lost sleep.
I was so worn out by the first day of Maker Faire, that after moving into a double (rooming with Bernard), we both fell asleep by 9 PM. Day 2 (of 2) of Maker Faire was pretty similar to the first, but without the complications of the constitution. Bernard and I were both fighting upset stomachs (we're pretty sure that it was the food at the hotel where we were staying) and needed a few bathroom breaks. We also took more time to tour other exhibits and see what else people had brought. I really liked the guy with the sisal twiner (sisal is a fibrous plant that grows in arid climates and is typically made into rope or twine), but I really wanted to replace his motor with a bicycle (don't laugh, this would be a really good project). I visited a couple of bio-gas projects where I felt that they had a different definition of "affordable" from me. Oh well, I'll always have a soft spot in my heart for bio-gas. I spent a bunch of time with the guy at the adjacent booth who had a really cool rural toilet design and who really wanted to get some GCS shellers down to South Africa. I also talked to a lot of people working on "trash rehablitation" (e.g. crocheting old plastic bags into shoulder bags, or crafting old flip-flops into beads and necklaces), which is always fun to see. I even saw a few people from MIT and talked a bit with them. I even saw a book on development in Kenya that had a picture of Stupin and Suprio (friends from IDDS) in there. All in all, it was a good day. A bunch of people went out to a club for the after-party, but my stomach had other plans, so Bernard and I crashed early again.
I really liked rooming with Bernard, since he's such an entertaining guy (very subtle humor) and we get along really well. I was also really impressed with the organizers at Maker Faire and how on-the-ball they were. The event ran really smoothly (except for the tainted hotel food) and was a lot of fun (it definitely helps that they attracted some great Makers). Oh, and they brought fast internet, so I downloaded some development manuals from here (also added to the Linkes page on the blog) which I'm super-excited about.
I am just taking it easy in Nairobi today (trying to pace myself a bit) before having a few meetings tomorrow and hopping on the bus back to Arusha. All in all, this has probably been my favorite trip to Nairobi.
I arrived in Nairobi in the afternoon and had a quick meeting with a prospective customer in City Centre before scurrying off to the Industrial Area. I wanted to check one or two more things off my to-do list, but I was pretty exhausted from 7 hours on the bus (I think they made the road bumpier in the past week) so I just grabbed a quick bite and was asleep by 8 PM.
On Thursday, I headed to the Peace Corps office to check in with a couple of people. I had a nice conversation with Serah, who was always incredibly helpful during my Peace Corps service before going to say hi to Mary in the Medical office. She was also friendly and we struck up a conversation about maize grinders (a topic I'm researching for GCS), and she had some useful insights. Then I ran over to the motor-pool and talked to GG (I can't remember his real name anymore, since everyone just refers to him by his initials), who gave me directions to navigate the maze that is Nairobi and was entertaining, as always.
My first stop was the Kenya Agricultural Research Institute or KARI. I was on the matatu, and I saw the building, and I was surprised that GG had given me wrong directions. But I hopped out and went to the main building (there were several on the campus) and asked for the maize specialist. They asked me to sit and wait for the director to help me. After 40 minutes, the director came and told me that I was in the wrong building. Apparently, GG's directions were completely accurate, and I had simply gone to the wrong building (a soil institute--though I'm not sure why the first three people I spoke to couldn't have mentioned that they don't do any crop work there). So I hopped on another matatu and got to the right building. Unfortunately, the director wasn't there, but I had an in depth conversation with one of his research assistants on seed varieties and farm sizes around Kenya. He also directed me to a rice specialist so that I could learn about a bicycle powered rice thresher being developed by some Korean development workers. Definitely an interesting project.
After that, I traveled to CNFA, which is one of our partners in Tanzania to meet with their Kenyan administration. He mentioned that he had just been working on the intractable problem of maize shelling and was trying to figure out what sort of technology was available for farmers. Talk about fortunate timing. He helped me understand the system for working with agro-dealers in Kenya (it requires coordinating with CNFA, AGMARK and KENADA, for a start) and gave me some contact information for some interesting groups. He made a good point about thinking about COMESA (the COmmon Market for Eastern and Southern Africa, but it's an economic confederation in eastern and southern Africa; East Africa=Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi while COMESA=East Africa + Ethiopia, Zambia, Malawi and other nations), which makes sense for scale.
At that point, I wanted to meet with a few more people, but Nairobi rush hour had other ideas. It took me about an hour to travel the 4 miles back to City Centre, so I opted to get myself sorted for Maker Faire. I checked into the hotel and wrote a bunch of emails on my phone (I really missed my phone while I was in the states) before crashing.
I woke up early the next morning to finish up everything before the Faire. I ran to the bus station to pick up the GCS machines that had been sent for the occasion, only to be told that they hadn't arrived. It was only after arguing with several employees there who were trying to eat their breakfast that they found the machines. The driver couldn't find the bike shop (it probably would have helped if I had given him the correct street), so I had him drop me back at the hotel. I grabbed two machines and began asking around for the shop (which was a much better landmark than the non-existent street I had written down) and found that it was only five minutes walk to get there. The first trip I was hauling 50 pounds and wishing that I had the arm-strength that I used to have. Then came the 70 pound load. I was pretty sore, and it was only 9 AM. Then I had to wait around at the bike shop so that they could fix up a bike (they were supposed to have that ready when I came), which was another 20 minutes of them tightening bolts that I would soon be loosening to assemble the machine. Finally, the bike was ready, but as I started riding, I realized that I didn't have rope to secure the cargo to the back rack, so I had to walk it to the University for Maker Faire.
I arrived slightly late, but found that I was just in time for the event's beginning. I spent the first hour of the Faire assembling the sheller and bike before I was ready to start presenting at my booth. Fortunately, the weather was unpleasant, so there wasn't much traffic at the start. As the day wore on, though, more and more people were coming, and I was having trouble talking to everyone. I had to switch back and forth between Kiswahili and English while talking to different customers (which led to a slight problem when I was talking to one of the event organizers, and he just looked blankly at me and said "I'm sorry, I don't understand Kiswahili"--I hadn't even realized that I wasn't speaking English until he told me). Fortunately, Bernard arrived at 3 PM and tweaked the set-up a bit so that it ran better (we didn't have maize anyway, so we relied on video, which actually made a really compelling case--a few people weren't convinced when I assured them that we hadn't doctored the footage) and he helped me with talking to customers. We actually got lots of positive feedback, which was nice. Most people just wanted to know when they would be able to buy one (definitely excited about GCS selling them in Kenya!) and how much the cost would be (their jaws always dropped when I told them that it would be under 5000 Kenyan shillings or about $60).
The other wrinkle in the day was that it was the signing of the new Kenyan constitution (sorry, no link--that's a pretty hefty document, and I'm not sure they've moved it online yet). Most of the government and a large group of foreign dignitaries were just a few miles away, along with an enormous crowd. It was definitely an exciting day, since the old constitution had been to the detriment of many citizens and the new one looks to create a better system of government for the wananchi (people of the country). I was actually super-excited to be so close to the momentous event and was glad that it had all turned out so well (though, of course, with a few unsavory characters in attendance). However, the parades and honking horns weren't the most conducive to my sleep, but in this case, I was happy for the lost sleep.
I was so worn out by the first day of Maker Faire, that after moving into a double (rooming with Bernard), we both fell asleep by 9 PM. Day 2 (of 2) of Maker Faire was pretty similar to the first, but without the complications of the constitution. Bernard and I were both fighting upset stomachs (we're pretty sure that it was the food at the hotel where we were staying) and needed a few bathroom breaks. We also took more time to tour other exhibits and see what else people had brought. I really liked the guy with the sisal twiner (sisal is a fibrous plant that grows in arid climates and is typically made into rope or twine), but I really wanted to replace his motor with a bicycle (don't laugh, this would be a really good project). I visited a couple of bio-gas projects where I felt that they had a different definition of "affordable" from me. Oh well, I'll always have a soft spot in my heart for bio-gas. I spent a bunch of time with the guy at the adjacent booth who had a really cool rural toilet design and who really wanted to get some GCS shellers down to South Africa. I also talked to a lot of people working on "trash rehablitation" (e.g. crocheting old plastic bags into shoulder bags, or crafting old flip-flops into beads and necklaces), which is always fun to see. I even saw a few people from MIT and talked a bit with them. I even saw a book on development in Kenya that had a picture of Stupin and Suprio (friends from IDDS) in there. All in all, it was a good day. A bunch of people went out to a club for the after-party, but my stomach had other plans, so Bernard and I crashed early again.
I really liked rooming with Bernard, since he's such an entertaining guy (very subtle humor) and we get along really well. I was also really impressed with the organizers at Maker Faire and how on-the-ball they were. The event ran really smoothly (except for the tainted hotel food) and was a lot of fun (it definitely helps that they attracted some great Makers). Oh, and they brought fast internet, so I downloaded some development manuals from here (also added to the Linkes page on the blog) which I'm super-excited about.
I am just taking it easy in Nairobi today (trying to pace myself a bit) before having a few meetings tomorrow and hopping on the bus back to Arusha. All in all, this has probably been my favorite trip to Nairobi.
Saturday, June 19, 2010
Preparing for take-off
Sorry for the immense delay. It was nice to take a little time off of reflection. I probably won't get to fill in all the details from the last month, but I'll do my best to get some of the better stories up here.
Well, just before leaving Arusha I had finally settled into a pretty good routine. I settled into the new house, which is certainly comfortable, but its location means that the kids like to visit me. A lot. I feel less like a playmate and more like a toy. It's also unfortunate that our "sitting room" is a workshop during the day, so there's plenty of dangerous things to keep out of their hands. Just a little exhausting. On the plus side, we're keeping the house stocked with lots of vegetables, so I was eating at least a salad per day. And my puppy was spending every moment that he could with me. I'm not sure how he's doing now that I'm gone. I miss him, and I hope that he'll still be around when I get back. Not exactly a sure thing.
Work was pretty hectic as I tried to finish up a lot of loose ends before leaving. Too many hours spent on accounting, but at least I squared it all away before leaving. I also followed up with a bunch of my contacts around town to check in with them. The most important stop was definitely at Tanganyika Farmers' Association (TFA). TFA has large agriculture shops in 11 major cities across Tanzania and I visited 5 of them on my trip to the south. I went in to schedule an appointment since I wasn't sure which person I needed to call. They brought me to an office and asked what work the company does, so I explained to them about how our maize sheller works. The woman was very polite in telling me that it didn't seem like a good fit with the other products that they stock. She was about to show me to the door when I stopped her. I explained how much positive feedback we had received from the branch managers at each branch and I started dropping names. I think her favorite part was when I did an impression of Mr. Werekyasa in Mafinga (every time I explained a feature of the product he just replied by saying "Sure?!?" and it kinda made me feel like I was hosting an infomercial or something). Anyway, she invited me to meet with the Director so that we could formally begin the negotiation process.
I was also trying to work on my external tasks (I woke up for the last IDDS meeting while I was in Tanzania, but was just too exhausted for one last 1:30 AM meeting). I made an introduction over email between two groups working on similar projects and got the following reply "Your intro has turned into a 10 person meeting at the UN logistics base in Port au Prince..." That was pretty exciting.
Anyway, after I finished up everything in Arusha and said way too many hasty good-byes, I returned to Nairobi. In true Daniel fashion, I had to frantically search for a small plastic bag that I lost on the bus-ride and found it a week later in my suitcase. (I swear that I turned that bag inside out twice!) I took care of a bunch of GCS errands in Nairobi's industrial area all morning. I didn't feel like taking matatus, so I think I wound up walking about 10 miles running my errands. At one point, someone on the street called me a Kikuyu (the most populous tribe in Kenya). I replied (I was walking past his stall, so it was probably shouting rather than just replying) that I was a Taita (the tribe I lived with for 12 months in Kenya). Then someone greeted me in the Taita language from a neighboring stall. I replied and greeted them back, and everyone cheered. Oftentimes, Nairobi is frustrating, but that was actually a really fun exchange.
After I finished with those errands, I decided to visit the Peace Corps office. Just outside the office, a Land Cruiser stopped alongside me and some of the volunteers who were taking care of Peace Corps business in Nairobi recognized me and greeted me. And then they told me that they were just talking about me. That was pretty random, since I had not communicated with them in 5 months at that point (all my fault, I need to be better about keeping in touch with my "neighbors"). At the office, I first went to talk to Louis (he was one of my most trusted allies there) and ask him how things were going in the Small Enterprise Development sector which he manages. We had a really nice conversation and I told him all about my work at GCS. He told me that he wanted us to demonstrate our machines at training and that he might want one for his mother who harvested such a huge crop this year that she's worried about losing it to weevils and other pests (still, that's a much better problem to have than recent years when farmers had to cope with little or no harvest at all). I also dropped by to visit with Enos (the director of PC Kenya's education program, which is the program I was part of for 14 months) and we had a nice conversation. I have to say that in general, when education doesn't come up with Enos, our discussions are very pleasant.
After that, I went back and actually spent a little time with the volunteers in Nairobi and they all wanted to know how they could buy our maize shellers as well. It was really exciting. They also filled me in on the latest program news and made me feel like I hadn't left at all. But after we all finished our first beer, I realized that I needed to hurry back to City Centre to pick up my suitcase and head to the airport for my final departure. At the airport I made some phone calls to some friends in country, but I had used up most of my credit calling Zambia and Ghana for IDDS, so I didn't get to talk for too long. Then, after passing through security 3 times (yeah, it's complicated at Nairobi's airport) I got on the plane (first time in 18 months) and set off back home.
Well, just before leaving Arusha I had finally settled into a pretty good routine. I settled into the new house, which is certainly comfortable, but its location means that the kids like to visit me. A lot. I feel less like a playmate and more like a toy. It's also unfortunate that our "sitting room" is a workshop during the day, so there's plenty of dangerous things to keep out of their hands. Just a little exhausting. On the plus side, we're keeping the house stocked with lots of vegetables, so I was eating at least a salad per day. And my puppy was spending every moment that he could with me. I'm not sure how he's doing now that I'm gone. I miss him, and I hope that he'll still be around when I get back. Not exactly a sure thing.
Work was pretty hectic as I tried to finish up a lot of loose ends before leaving. Too many hours spent on accounting, but at least I squared it all away before leaving. I also followed up with a bunch of my contacts around town to check in with them. The most important stop was definitely at Tanganyika Farmers' Association (TFA). TFA has large agriculture shops in 11 major cities across Tanzania and I visited 5 of them on my trip to the south. I went in to schedule an appointment since I wasn't sure which person I needed to call. They brought me to an office and asked what work the company does, so I explained to them about how our maize sheller works. The woman was very polite in telling me that it didn't seem like a good fit with the other products that they stock. She was about to show me to the door when I stopped her. I explained how much positive feedback we had received from the branch managers at each branch and I started dropping names. I think her favorite part was when I did an impression of Mr. Werekyasa in Mafinga (every time I explained a feature of the product he just replied by saying "Sure?!?" and it kinda made me feel like I was hosting an infomercial or something). Anyway, she invited me to meet with the Director so that we could formally begin the negotiation process.
I was also trying to work on my external tasks (I woke up for the last IDDS meeting while I was in Tanzania, but was just too exhausted for one last 1:30 AM meeting). I made an introduction over email between two groups working on similar projects and got the following reply "Your intro has turned into a 10 person meeting at the UN logistics base in Port au Prince..." That was pretty exciting.
Anyway, after I finished up everything in Arusha and said way too many hasty good-byes, I returned to Nairobi. In true Daniel fashion, I had to frantically search for a small plastic bag that I lost on the bus-ride and found it a week later in my suitcase. (I swear that I turned that bag inside out twice!) I took care of a bunch of GCS errands in Nairobi's industrial area all morning. I didn't feel like taking matatus, so I think I wound up walking about 10 miles running my errands. At one point, someone on the street called me a Kikuyu (the most populous tribe in Kenya). I replied (I was walking past his stall, so it was probably shouting rather than just replying) that I was a Taita (the tribe I lived with for 12 months in Kenya). Then someone greeted me in the Taita language from a neighboring stall. I replied and greeted them back, and everyone cheered. Oftentimes, Nairobi is frustrating, but that was actually a really fun exchange.
After I finished with those errands, I decided to visit the Peace Corps office. Just outside the office, a Land Cruiser stopped alongside me and some of the volunteers who were taking care of Peace Corps business in Nairobi recognized me and greeted me. And then they told me that they were just talking about me. That was pretty random, since I had not communicated with them in 5 months at that point (all my fault, I need to be better about keeping in touch with my "neighbors"). At the office, I first went to talk to Louis (he was one of my most trusted allies there) and ask him how things were going in the Small Enterprise Development sector which he manages. We had a really nice conversation and I told him all about my work at GCS. He told me that he wanted us to demonstrate our machines at training and that he might want one for his mother who harvested such a huge crop this year that she's worried about losing it to weevils and other pests (still, that's a much better problem to have than recent years when farmers had to cope with little or no harvest at all). I also dropped by to visit with Enos (the director of PC Kenya's education program, which is the program I was part of for 14 months) and we had a nice conversation. I have to say that in general, when education doesn't come up with Enos, our discussions are very pleasant.
After that, I went back and actually spent a little time with the volunteers in Nairobi and they all wanted to know how they could buy our maize shellers as well. It was really exciting. They also filled me in on the latest program news and made me feel like I hadn't left at all. But after we all finished our first beer, I realized that I needed to hurry back to City Centre to pick up my suitcase and head to the airport for my final departure. At the airport I made some phone calls to some friends in country, but I had used up most of my credit calling Zambia and Ghana for IDDS, so I didn't get to talk for too long. Then, after passing through security 3 times (yeah, it's complicated at Nairobi's airport) I got on the plane (first time in 18 months) and set off back home.
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