Sigh. So I never claimed to be a great driver. I'm not a bad driver, but things always just seem to happen.
Like Friday. I was still at the office at 7 PM. Jodie had left already and had left the car so that Reuben and I could get home. The power had just cut out, so I just wanted to head home. I had to back the car down the driveway that leads to our office, which is a difficult task even when there are lights in the area, with people darting back and forth on the path behind the car (and I don't know why our car has tinted windows or why we haven't replaced the rear-lights, all I can say is that we clearly like a challenge--fortunately, we did replace the passenger-side side-view mirror that I took off in January).
I was moving the car as carefully as possible (staying at the 5 MPH mark) and saw that there were no people or headlights/taillights in my path, so I wanted to make as wide of a turn as possible to make this a 2 point turn rather than 4 or more (it's a rather narrow street as well). Then all of a sudden I heard that painful noise of metal against metal. If you want to know the definition of invisible, it is a black car parked on a dark street viewed through a tinted window.
I parked the car and went to survey the damage. Fortunately, my friend Phamy (a motorcycle driver who hangs out at our house a lot) happened to be right there. He brought over his motorcycle and shone the headlight onto the car. The good news was that it was a tiny dent near the driver side tire and a tiny scratch. The bad news was the Lexus logo that I saw in the hubcaps. I knew right then that this wasn't going to be cheap. We exchanged contact info and I agreed to pay for the repair. The defensive side of me was about to point out that he was the idiot who parked on a through-way when there were plenty of actual spots where he could have parked his car. I'm glad Phamy was there, since he brought out the conciliatory side of me. After all, the way it seems to me is that you can kinda park your car wherever if the road isn't paved, it's really just a question of how courteous you feel.
Anyway, the driver came back yesterday with a quote from a shop. They want 236,000 (about $160, but that still translates to a few weeks salary for me) to fix the damage. I am glad that my co-worker Philemon knows lots of people, so he's working on finding a better deal for this. I'm sure that he'll work something out. In the meantime, I'll eat more carrots and see about improving my night-vision.
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
Friday, April 15, 2011
Where I live aka Symphony in orange
Sorry, I know this post is long overdue seeing as we've lived in our current house for over 5 months, but better late than never, right?
When I titled this picture Our House, I had the song by Madness stuck in my head for the rest of the day.
And this is what I see when I look out the front door.
Well, we finally live in a house with a gate and we also have a beautiful view of Mt. Meru, some days complete with majestic clouds above. We have a garden, though we have yet to plant anything. We have been burying our compost, however to increase soil fertility. Our house has 2 1000 liter water tanks that fill whenever there is water.
This is what our house looks like to our neighbors. The vacant lot next to us is pretty lush.
This is the view outside of our gate looking to the left
And the view to the right
The house has four bedrooms and three bathrooms (the master bathroom is the size of my bedroom at the old house) as well as a spacious kitchen (my concept of spaciousness has probably changed a bit during my time here) with lots of cabinets. We have a furnished living room and we've had 20 people in there without feeling cramped and one or two people in there without feeling like it's too sparse. We have a computer with a large monitor in there that we sometimes use to watch movies. We also have an attached garage which we converted to a workshop for the company, so our house is actually buzzing most of the day.
My room is pretty empty, but I like it better that way. I have a mattress on the floor and a basket for my laundry (and typically assorted belongings strewn about on the floor). Other than that, I just have my fan, which I use every night since it gets pretty hot. I did have a bed (sorta) at the start, but it just got to be such a nuisance to sweep under there that I decided it was easier this way.
Our house is about a kilometer away from Masai Camp (one of the more popular clubs in Arusha), so on Friday and Saturday nights, we can hear the music going well into dawn whether or not we head to the club. We also don't have a lot of lights in the area, so we can see stars incredibly clearly. We're the only non-Tanzanian house in the area and most of our neighbors are very friendly to us.
Our lease goes until October and then we'll decide if we want to stick around. We're all pretty comfortable and have a good dynamic, so if possible, I think we'll try to avoid moving again.
We have a garage. We kept a motorcycle in there for a while, but never any cars. But in general, it's company space.
The back of our house isn't so pretty, but it's handy to have the huge clotheslines
Why our neighborhood is called "Banana"
I'll work on getting some pictures of the inside of our house at some point.
When I titled this picture Our House, I had the song by Madness stuck in my head for the rest of the day.
And this is what I see when I look out the front door.
Well, we finally live in a house with a gate and we also have a beautiful view of Mt. Meru, some days complete with majestic clouds above. We have a garden, though we have yet to plant anything. We have been burying our compost, however to increase soil fertility. Our house has 2 1000 liter water tanks that fill whenever there is water.
This is what our house looks like to our neighbors. The vacant lot next to us is pretty lush.
This is the view outside of our gate looking to the left
And the view to the right
The house has four bedrooms and three bathrooms (the master bathroom is the size of my bedroom at the old house) as well as a spacious kitchen (my concept of spaciousness has probably changed a bit during my time here) with lots of cabinets. We have a furnished living room and we've had 20 people in there without feeling cramped and one or two people in there without feeling like it's too sparse. We have a computer with a large monitor in there that we sometimes use to watch movies. We also have an attached garage which we converted to a workshop for the company, so our house is actually buzzing most of the day.
My room is pretty empty, but I like it better that way. I have a mattress on the floor and a basket for my laundry (and typically assorted belongings strewn about on the floor). Other than that, I just have my fan, which I use every night since it gets pretty hot. I did have a bed (sorta) at the start, but it just got to be such a nuisance to sweep under there that I decided it was easier this way.
Our house is about a kilometer away from Masai Camp (one of the more popular clubs in Arusha), so on Friday and Saturday nights, we can hear the music going well into dawn whether or not we head to the club. We also don't have a lot of lights in the area, so we can see stars incredibly clearly. We're the only non-Tanzanian house in the area and most of our neighbors are very friendly to us.
Our lease goes until October and then we'll decide if we want to stick around. We're all pretty comfortable and have a good dynamic, so if possible, I think we'll try to avoid moving again.
We have a garage. We kept a motorcycle in there for a while, but never any cars. But in general, it's company space.
The back of our house isn't so pretty, but it's handy to have the huge clotheslines
Why our neighborhood is called "Banana"
I'll work on getting some pictures of the inside of our house at some point.
Friday, April 8, 2011
Sisal charcoal
Back in Kenya, I lived near an expansive sisal plantation that stretched as far as the eye can see. Sisal (also here) looks like an enormous aloe vera plant only when you crack open the leaves, you find fibers instead of medicine. On large plantations, people harvest these for producing rope and twine. However, in many arid regions, sisal is one of the few plants that can survive, so it is used there as a multi-purpose plant. Its leaves have needles at the end that mean it can effectively be planted as a fence. It also has a nice stalk (I believe it is classified as a tree-like shrub since the stalk is actually rather spongy on the inside) that people use in building structures. And of course, when people are waiting for the rains to come, they may spend their days braiding twine to sell in local shops for a few cents.
A lot of these communities face acute shortages of cooking fuel, so I wanted to work on making sisal charcoal, so on one of my trips to Nadosoito, I grabbed a few leaves to do some experiments. After trying it out, I went back to Nadosoito to work on it with the community. We used old brown leaves, which were incredibly dry as well as a bit of the white spongy material to help get the burn started. I was amazed by how quickly the moisture content vanished, and this wound up being one of the fastest charcoal burns I've ever conducted (I didn't time it, but I think the whole process was over in one hour, compared to the usual 2.5). Still, there's definitely a lot of work still to be done.
1. The charcoal turned out really well, although the starts of the leaves didn't carbonize at all, so I think we just have to cut that part off in the future.
2. Collecting sisal leaves is a rather painful process. You tend to be enmeshed in needles, so my hand started to look rather like a pin cushion. Also, my shin took one more than a quarter inch deep. Next time I'm wearing gardening gloves for this.
3. We couldn't find any useful binding media for producing briquettes. We tried euphorbia milk (euphorbia is also known as the milk tree because when you cut the bark it oozes out a milky liquid), but it didn't stick very well.
4. When we burned the unbriquetted charcoal, it was producing a bit of carbon monoxide. I suspected the clear smoke was dangerous, but without any sort of testing equipment, I opted to breathe in the smoke and when I felt the carbon monoxide effects in my head, I knew we needed a solution to the briquetting issue.
Still, considering how abundant sisal is, this is definitely an exciting development and if we can just find a solution for problem number 3 above, we should have a really cool project.
A lot of these communities face acute shortages of cooking fuel, so I wanted to work on making sisal charcoal, so on one of my trips to Nadosoito, I grabbed a few leaves to do some experiments. After trying it out, I went back to Nadosoito to work on it with the community. We used old brown leaves, which were incredibly dry as well as a bit of the white spongy material to help get the burn started. I was amazed by how quickly the moisture content vanished, and this wound up being one of the fastest charcoal burns I've ever conducted (I didn't time it, but I think the whole process was over in one hour, compared to the usual 2.5). Still, there's definitely a lot of work still to be done.
1. The charcoal turned out really well, although the starts of the leaves didn't carbonize at all, so I think we just have to cut that part off in the future.
2. Collecting sisal leaves is a rather painful process. You tend to be enmeshed in needles, so my hand started to look rather like a pin cushion. Also, my shin took one more than a quarter inch deep. Next time I'm wearing gardening gloves for this.
3. We couldn't find any useful binding media for producing briquettes. We tried euphorbia milk (euphorbia is also known as the milk tree because when you cut the bark it oozes out a milky liquid), but it didn't stick very well.
4. When we burned the unbriquetted charcoal, it was producing a bit of carbon monoxide. I suspected the clear smoke was dangerous, but without any sort of testing equipment, I opted to breathe in the smoke and when I felt the carbon monoxide effects in my head, I knew we needed a solution to the briquetting issue.
Still, considering how abundant sisal is, this is definitely an exciting development and if we can just find a solution for problem number 3 above, we should have a really cool project.
Thursday, April 7, 2011
Utilities and traffic
We received a water bill last week. 837 shillings. That's about 56 cents. When you subtract the 600 shillings in service charges for the man to read our water meter, that should give you an idea of how scarce water has been at our house over the past month or so. The electricity bill tells a pretty similar story. It's really amazing how cheap utilities are when they're switched off most of the time. Fortunately, the rains have been pretty strong the past few weeks, so it seems like the hydropower stations and water supply should be recharged moving forward. There was a deceptive period shortly after the rains began when power was reliable, but it returned to the heavily rationed state shortly after that. The rumor going around is that some important dignitary was in Arusha, so they skipped the rationing plan for that week. I'm confident that the rumor is true because I was also in a daladala last week and the traffic police held up traffic on 3 legs of one of the main roundabouts during rush hour and only let traffic coming through one direction for about 15 minutes.
On an unrelated note, The Economist just had an interesting piece on urban water management in Cambodia.
On an unrelated note, The Economist just had an interesting piece on urban water management in Cambodia.
Wednesday, April 6, 2011
This is why I can't have nice things
Last week, my computer had an accident. Involving gravity
They told me that it would cost $200 to replace the screen, which isn't much more than what I paid for the computer. I'm already pretty comfortable with making it work, so I'll probably just leave it as is for a while longer. I got used to this at university with my previous laptop which also had a screen issue. That was also an accident involving gravity. And both of them were on days when I just hadn't had enough caffeine.
Also, I clearly do not clean the dust off often enough. I liked one suggestion to cover the rightmost portion of my screen with post-it notes. Any other ideas?
They told me that it would cost $200 to replace the screen, which isn't much more than what I paid for the computer. I'm already pretty comfortable with making it work, so I'll probably just leave it as is for a while longer. I got used to this at university with my previous laptop which also had a screen issue. That was also an accident involving gravity. And both of them were on days when I just hadn't had enough caffeine.
Also, I clearly do not clean the dust off often enough. I liked one suggestion to cover the rightmost portion of my screen with post-it notes. Any other ideas?
Monday, March 21, 2011
Danny
So back in October there was a cute puppy outside our office. Probably born in late September. I played with him so much that Glady started calling him Danny. Then, one day, the owner let us have him, so we took him home.
Danny can be a bit of a handful. He's supposed to be an outside dog, but he would run in every opportunity he got. And this kinda happened (okay, so we weren't that bad, but we definitely let him fend for himself some nights since there are some nearby restaurants where they leave meat scraps for the local dogs).
Anyway, three weeks ago, he tried to follow me to town, but discovered that he's not allowed to ride daladalas. I'm pretty sure that someone picked him up and sold him (there are tons of people selling puppies on the street in Arusha). I'm a little sad, but I'm sure he found a good home (he's clever enough to run away if he's not happy). And I'm hoping that I'll get to see him sometime. He could be a handful, but he definitely grew on us. Oh well, Juju still visits us from time to time, so we still have puppies around.
Danny can be a bit of a handful. He's supposed to be an outside dog, but he would run in every opportunity he got. And this kinda happened (okay, so we weren't that bad, but we definitely let him fend for himself some nights since there are some nearby restaurants where they leave meat scraps for the local dogs).
Anyway, three weeks ago, he tried to follow me to town, but discovered that he's not allowed to ride daladalas. I'm pretty sure that someone picked him up and sold him (there are tons of people selling puppies on the street in Arusha). I'm a little sad, but I'm sure he found a good home (he's clever enough to run away if he's not happy). And I'm hoping that I'll get to see him sometime. He could be a handful, but he definitely grew on us. Oh well, Juju still visits us from time to time, so we still have puppies around.
Friday, March 11, 2011
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
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
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