Mzungu! Mzungu!

“Mzungu! Mzungu!” Yes, thank you, I do realize that I am a white foreigner. No need to point that out to me with a tone of surprise.  Fine, when we’re struggling to communicate where we want to go in the Dala-dala in our broken Swahili (ok, more then broken. More like shattered.) and we make complete fools of ourselves, laughing at the silly wazungus is what should happen. I mean we sound ridiculous. But on every street corner, all the way down the street, the catcalls and the looks get old real fast. This is a situation I have never been in before and it has been quite an, shall I say, interesting experience for me. In all the places I have been in my life, I have never been so completely in the ethnic minority and stood out so prominently in a crowd. But hey, at least drunk guys on the dala-dala don’t discriminate between mzungu and Tanzanian. Dude, get off my shoulder. The affection is not mutual.

In between the always thrilling dala-dala rides, this has been quite a busy week. Now that we have the kiln up and running, we have been spending much of our days collecting biomass, burning biomass, mixing that biomass-turned-charcoal with cassava flour, and pressing that mixture into fuel briquettes. We have set up our own production site to make the charcoal and briquettes so that we can be confident in the technology before we present it to others. Hopefully by the end of the week, we’ll have a production process and briquettes which we can confidently share with other groups. We strive for perfection.

The briquettes we’re making are a mixture of charcoal dust produced from rice husk, wood shavings, sawdust, and corn husk (really whatever biomass stuff we can get our hands on. And the looks we get from Tanzanians when we ask for their leftovers. You want what? To take my rotting wood scraps? Well ok…) and a cassava flour mixture which acts as a glue and holds the briquettes in their shape. Interesting fact, that cassava glue that we’re using is what makes up Ugali, a local dish, that is cassava paste served with mboga, veggies. It is literally a starchy glue. Yum. (But actually, I think it’s quite tasty.)

When we fired up the kiln we noticed that the dirt on top was
quite hot. So we buried some potatoes in it to cook. They came
out well though we did have to boil them a little extra.

Emily pressing briquettes! With Naomie keeping watch behind her.

The technical work has been the constant throughout the week. Between work sessions, we’ve had several meetings and also met some new friends from down the street. On Wednesday, James and I met with this awesome organization that works with youth, aged secondary school through university, to teach entrepreneurship skills, family planning, and communication skills. Vision 4 Youth has a group of seven university aged students interested in starting a briquetting business. And here we are, a group of university students, offering to teach briquetting. How perfect! As James talked about what we as DHE were doing in Tanzania and how we could run training sessions, the look on the woman’s face went from interested to pleased to straight up overwhelmed at the prospect of what we were offering to do. She seemed thrilled!

On Friday we went back to Vision 4 Youth to meet with some of the interested students. Iit turns out the operation and the tools they want to shoot for are nothing like what we’ve worked with in the past. It’s the difference between the stone age and the industrial age. Makes sense really, as they are an urban based group while we’ve been thinking almost exclusively about rural settings. (Our funding comes from an organization interested in the lives of rural families so we’re going to have to spin this group and somehow make our impact relate to rural families. Should be fun.) But Vision 4 Youth recognizes that they have to start small so we’ll show them our ancient technology for pressing fuel and see what they think. I think we still have a lot to offer so we’ll see how this pans out.

Fourth of July came and went with a small dinner celebration at home with time spent watching the sun set over Mt. Meru. [Side note: Day changes to night so abruptly it makes timing the sunset very tricky. You’d think it’d be easy to catch as the sun sets exactly at 6:45 every day without fail, but it only lasts for about 5 minuets. At 6:30 it’s sunny and light out then by 6:50 it’s pitch black. Boom. Light to dark. No in between.]

Fourth of July on our porch. Strange celebrating without fireworks.

Emily and I dressed in our aprons for cooking!

With Saturday came a much anticipated work break. We piled into a dala-dala and headed to Arusha for a cooking class which we arrived for right on Tanzanian time (otherwise considered half an hour late). Hakuna shida, no problems. Zainab took us to her home where we learned how to cook ugali, mboga, a pea sause, rice pilau, and chapati. Drying laundry dangled over our heads and little kids scampered in and out of the tiled courtyard in which we cooked, disappearing into the darkened interiors of rooms leading off of the narrow open space. The food was delicious. It is a mark of how satisfyingly and deliciously filling the food is in Tanzania that I’ve been eating the same four dishes every day for nearly a month and I’m not sick of it yet. In fact, I still very much enjoy rice and beans. There is something very comforting about walking into a street-side restaurant and knowing exactly what options they’ll have (rice, ugali, or chips served with veggies and your choice of meat or fish) and knowing exactly what’ll you’ll eat so that when the waiter inevitably asks for your order the moment your bottom hits the thin plastic chair, you’ll be ready. Anyway, the cooking class was excellent.

Emily rolling out chapati. Yum! I see lots of homemade chapti in our future...

Saturday night we went out to see Monsters University. Talk about a culture shock. Squeezing off the crowded dala-dala into the popcorn scented movie theater was a little jarring to say the least. Needless to say were were surrounded by mzungus in the theater. But hey, fabulously hilarious movie.

Sunday was another work day, firing up the kiln, and making more charcoal. The four of also took a few hours break to have lunch at our new friends’ house down the street. The four sisters, aged 12 to mid-twenties, are staying in a house owned by their mother (who isn’t there right now, she’s living back in their village) for school break. All speak English quite well (lucky, otherwise it would have been a very fleeting friendship) and are very generous and welcoming. Over lunch, we learned about the over 120 different tribes in Tanzania and the different occupations the girls want to pursue after school. And of course we played with the eldest sister’s baby who is 3 months and adorable. We promise to stay in touch when they return to school this week.

Our friends! After having lunch at their place, we invited them over for American/Chinese fare for dinner: chicken, pasta,
and an egg dish. I don't think they were huge fans of the food but they are too polite to say so. Ah well.

Monday we painted a library. It looks quite good if I do say so myself. Didas started EMORG, his organization, in 2011 to build this center consisting of a library, several classrooms, and a place to instruct teachers. Even though the place hasn’t officially opened yet, the tables in the library were already full of students studying as we painted outside. In the government schools, there can be as many as 80 or 90 students in one class. Not grade, classroom. With a single teacher. Then students head home to a house crowded with, say, six siblings and no text book of their own and attempt to study. Challenging to say the least. Didas has stocked the library with school textbooks for kids to come to have a quiet place to study or even read for pleasure. It is a wonderful vision and it’s in a pretty epic location as well. The library is the last building in the village before the vast expanse of the plains. Flat topped trees and several oversized mounds, too small and too abrupt to be hills, jut out of the surrounding landscape. It is beautiful.

The back of the library. Lookin' good. Rolly brushes for painting are so. much. fun.

I was just starting a coat on the final wall of the building when I heard the faint sound of buzzing. Rapidly the buzzing grew to a roaring drone. I look up and along the side of the building and there, 20 feet away and closing fast was a gigantic swarm of bees. You know those flocks of birds which all land in a single tree and then spontaneously erupt into the sky in a black cloud of bird? The bees were like that. They made a beeline right for the edge of the building which I quickly scooted around. Just after I rounded the corner I turned to watch the swarm pour past, hovering at a very constant 7 feet off the ground (I could judge this quite accurately as I measured it off of Tucker’s head conveniently located at a little over 6 feet above ground). Loud, dark, mesmerizing, and terrifying. Especially when Didas started talking about swarms taking down large mammals. Shudder.

I was swarmed again on the walk back to the dala-dala station but this time by much less threatening, though more talkative, creatures. Village kids wanted to try my sunglasses, touch my hair, and play with my camera. All with accompanied by a stream of Swahili. I’ll just nod and smile. I have not a clue what you’re saying but you are really cute.

And now it is midnight. How in the world did that happen. This week promises lots more opportunities for getting dirty and hopefully a chance to actually do laundry. My clean underwear pile is dwindling. Hopefully. Karibu! Welcome!