My New Project

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

Terrat Ward Office in the village of Mkonoo


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

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

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

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

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

Group discussion of one of our activities the first day

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

Photo*** credits: Mario Bollini

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

Sacrilege in the Kitchen

I've got a long streak of good luck in trying new recipes. I decided to try a new Indian recipe. Since saag (a spinach dish) is one of my favorite foods, I was really excited to give it a whirl. Now, most people know saag from Indian restaurants as saag paneer, where paneer is an Indian cheese. I realized that I was probably not going to take the effort to make the cheese and didn't have the money to buy some cheese, so I decided to buy some meat from the local butcher. Most butchers just sell beef, so I bought a half kilo and cooked up the sacred animal of the vast majority of India to put into an Indian dish. Also, I rarely cook meat these days, but we just got a new cleaver, so I was really happy to put that to use. (Thanks Becca, Mario, Arfa, Bina, Colin, David, Fareeha, Shavi and Vanessa!)

So, the recipe called for a lot of butter, for which I substituted a healthy amount of oil, a bit of margarine and some coconut milk. It actually worked out really well. I mean, not for our arteries, of course. But the coconut milk gave it a nice creamy quality and mixed really well with the spices. Mixing some kale with the spinach also worked out nicely. And the tomato, onion and carrot gave it some nice color.

Oh, and after attempt #2 and #3 to make falafel were rather unsuccessful, I am proud to report that Jodie and I made some delicious falafel on Monday night as we watched Mean Girls.

Electrical Adventures

There's a technical theater joke that goes:

Q: What do you call an electrician who is trying to do carpentry work?

A: A bad carpenter

---

Q: What do you call it when a carpenter who is trying to do electrical work?

A: A dead carpenter

Though I haven't done much carpentry or electrical work in a long time, this weekend made me think of the latter half of the joke.

Our power was out most of the day Saturday. It came back for the rest of town, except for our house and the ten or so immediately surrounding us. In the past, we've had problems with the wind knocking loose the wire that connects to our house. To make sure that wasn't the problem, I climbed on the wall that surrounds our compound and inched along the top surface to the offending wire (the wall is made of concrete blocks and is 2 meters high and the part I was standing on was about one foot wide). I used a broom (isn't that always the tool electricians use? -- I would've used a fork but they just weren't long enough) to try to knock the wire back into place. It didn't accomplish anything, but at one point, I fell and just managed to stay on the narrow platform I was on (probably would've broken something if I'd fallen to the ground). Turns out it was a different problem (never actually explained to us) and finally at 9:15 pm (13 hours after power was cut and 3 hours after it returned to everyone else) our lights came on.

On Sunday, the situation was different. Power went out at 9 AM, and we could hear radios and welding kit in the neighborhood, so we knew everyone else had power. I was in town most of the day, but when I got home, I felt more confident. I climbed the wall with the broomstick and poked at the wire again until I saw an enormous spark and our lights came on. I was a little startled, but after my stumble on Saturday, I kept my feet firmly planted.

We're still losing power for an average of 8 hours a day due to rationing (including today). Kinda makes me miss my Kenyan village where power was much, much more reliable than the third biggest town in Tanzania...

Arusha Nights

So I have been avoiding my blog a bit, but I feel like I'm back on track. I need to consolidate a bit or else I'll never actually catch up. And since I can tie in the old stuff with the present this way, it seems like it's the best place to start.

Masai Camp is listed in a lot of the guidebooks as a nice campsite. I'm sure that 5-10 years ago it was. Now it's one of the most popular clubs in Arusha and trying to get a good night's sleep there is nearly impossible (on Saturday night/Sunday morning, the music usually cuts out a little after 6 and you can hear it at our house, which is over 1 kilometer away). In 2010 I went there a grand total of 3 times, which was a reflection of how anti-social I was for the bulk of 2010. Anyway, within the first 10 days of 2011, I had already matched that record.

For New Years, my friend Nick was just finishing up his Peace Corps service (he was my closest volunteer in Kenya) and so we went out to Masai Camp. We got there right before midnight (it's nearly empty until 11 PM) and were just in time to countdown to the new year. It was a fun crowd that night, but since they were charging 10,000 shillings (about $6.70) cover charge (usually it's 5,000) so the floor had more expatriates than normal (and I was getting a surprising amount of attention from strange Indian men). Nick and I were out there until 2 before coming home. We went back the next night since it was Saturday and it was a much more Tanzanian crowd. I was glad to see a bunch of people who I knew and was really bummed that I couldn't enjoy the night more since I had a headache.

The next weekend, we had a group of MIT students staying with us (I'll have a few more posts on this, don't worry), so we took them to Masai Camp. It was a lot of fun and we enjoyed being such a large group on the dance floor. My favorite part was being with people who weren't used to all of the typical East African club music (plenty of it comes from America, but there's a good bit of Nigerian Pop and Bongo Flava). Anyway, there were some pretty intense Masai guys there that night, which made it even more fun. Since we were a big enough group, some of us walked home afterward and could hear the music the whole way.

After keeping up that pace, I needed some time to rest and to let my wallet recover. But this weekend my friend Pat (a fantastic Frisbee player from Australia) was having his good-bye party, so I grabbed some Japanese food with a bunch of the Frisbee crew and then they said that they were going to Empire Sports Bar and after some cajoling, they convinced me to come along. It was really exciting. We arrived at 8:30 and there was a live band playing and pretty much no one watching the soccer match on the TV (seemed weird that no one at this sports bar was interested in sports). We split into two tables (one inside where it was pretty much impossible to talk over the music and one outside where people were sharing their travel stories). I moved a bit back and forth between the two. Mostly I was reverting back to my anti-social tendencies (as people were talking about life in Korea and Japan, I was reading The Economist on my phone) and I was ready to head out of there around 11:15 since some of my friends were driving back down to my side of Arusha and I was kinda tired.

One friend brought me out onto the dance floor as I was saying my good-byes and I wound up staying another two hours. The band was a group called Warriors of the East and most of their set seemed to be Bob Marley's greatest hits. The energy was really great and most of the Tanzanians came over to dance with us. There was one huge guy wearing a Boy Scouts shirt he had bought in the market. He kept lifting up Claire and Rose (a couple of our Frisbee players who work at the same organization as Pat) sometimes at the same time, which was kinda cool at first, but probably got a little old after the third time. The only Tanzanian in our group (Jerry works with Pat as well and is crazy good at Frisbee) was an absolute riot out there and kept it crazy. It's been a long time since I've had that much fun on the dance floor.

There is another major club in Arusha called Via-Via, which is typically packed on Thursday nights. Now that IDDS meetings have been moved to 3 AM, I may go every once in a while. I haven't been there yet this year, but I'm trying to be more social.

Corn Shelling Emergency

Last night at 10:15 PM my phone rang. I didn't recognize the number. Turns out it was a prospective customer. I don't have any sense why he thought that 10:15 PM was a good time to call and ask the price of our machines. After he hung up, my brain started constructing scenarios involving situations where the fate of the country depended on this man removing kernels of corn from the cob before midnight and other such melodrama. That's normal, right?

Electricity

We've had some problems with electricity recently. We pre-pay our electricity bill like we do with phone credit here (I'm a big fan of that), and we thought at first that we were just out of credit. Upon closer inspection, though, we discovered that the wind can actually knock loose one of the wires that runs to our house. The solution is to stand on the roof of a car with a stick and knock the wires until the lights come back on. It's the windy season, so we're doing this quite a bit.

A Bit of a Funk

Sorry that I still haven't written about my January adventures. I do hate falling behind on my blog. However, I've also decided that sometimes it's better for me to keep my reflections private. I had a particularly negative tone in 2009 that I don't really want to bring back.

The past two weeks, I've been a bit down. Low energy. No appetite. Restless sleep (actually, this one has been going on for a while). Limited motivation. Minimal focus. So I decided to let it pass, which it seems to have done--though my appetite isn't actually restored, and the sleep seems to be a persistent condition.

Still today felt really refreshing, even if I didn't have a great Frisbee game, I did manage to check a bunch of nagging tasks off of my to-do list at work (though it persists in a much longer state than I'd like) and cleaned off my desktop so that my computer seems more manageable. So, hopefully I have a quieter February up ahead and you can hear all about my January adventures soon.