New Rafiki!

Ever wonder where your donated clothes go? That free t-shirt you got from your high school’s football team which you never wore anyways or that long sleeved Abercrombie shirt you never really liked. Or perhaps those old soccer cleats, a little worn on the spikes but still functional. We’ve found them all. And then some. Men wear Yankees baseball caps; I’ve passed one man wearing a Michigan cap (I was tempted to shout ‘Go Blue!’ to him but I reconsidered and thought perhaps maybe that wouldn’t go over so well) and one man wearing a shirt commemorating the Red Sox winning some pennant or other. Young woman walk by me on the street wearing Abercrombie and Fitch shirts, looking a little dusty but in good condition, or wearing worn t-shirts with writing so faded I can’t make it out. It’s a perfect combination of cultures: American t-shirts on top and colorful wrapped skirts on the bottom. So far from home, and yet, so similar.

Speaking of home, we have new house mates! As I mentioned earlier, the four of us are living in a rented house with five bedrooms, a gas stove (a very big deal around here), flush toilet, and running water (most of the time). The first comment from our housemates upon walking around the house, “Are we still in Africa?” Yeah, I wonder the same thing sometimes. Sure, dinners are a bit of a squeeze, but totally worth it. These guys are awesome. Tim, Dennis, Meral, and Gerrianna are four students from the Netherlands. The first three are first year masters students at University College Utrecht and the fourth is a second year at the college. They are doing a school field course on East Africa for the summer. For four weeks they traveled around Tanzania and a bit of Kenya doing various home stays and learning about culture and development. Now the group (originally of 23) have split up and are doing internships around East Africa. These four are working with EARD-CI (our partner organization), two on cultural tourism and two on community banks.

Their second night here we played peeon for a few hours. The next night the eight of us crowded around a computer screen to watch Pirates of the Caribbean. Last night they cooked pancakes for dinner and we played Resistance (my favorite group card game. Involved lots of accusations and yelling and deceit.) for hours. Between events, we’ve talked about life in the Netherlands, discussed technology and its role in society now and into the future, debated the merits of different ways of getting energy in the slums of Nairobi, discussed gender roles, and talked a lot about the East African experience. Something tells me this whole housing situation is going to work out quite well.

We've worked out a cooking schedule where we cook dinner on alternating nights for the eight of us which can be quite the undertaking in the small kitchen. Last night was their night to cook so Tim and Gerriane made stacks Dutch pancakes to be served with avocado, beans, jam, tomato, onion, and sugar. Avocado and beans are exactly typical Dutch, but hey, we’re all about mixing culture here. So yummy.

Tim, Gerrianna, and Dennis working on the pancakes.

One stack. Ok, actually the only stack we ever really had as we kind of
devoured the other pancakes as they came off the skillet.

Meral and Emily waiting for more pancakes.

Besides the new housemates, we’ve had quite the productive project week. On Tuesday, the Vision 4 Youth group came out to our space at EARD-CI to check out the briquetting operation we’ve set up. We walked them through the process of making briquettes from collecting and drying the biomass, to using our kiln to turning it into charcoal, to making a sticky mixture of charcoal dust and cassava flour, to pressing the mixture into briquettes and letting them dry. Judging by the laughs and the questions and the ideas on how they would improve various aspects of the presses, I’d say they really enjoyed the session and learned a lot from it. Success! We are going to continue to work with them and help them to set up their own operation on some land they have in Arusha. Very exciting.

Talking about our kiln and charcoal production with the group.

Working on pressing briquettes.

As soon as that group left, the four of us headed out to Moivaro, a small community a 20 minute dala-dala ride away, where we met up with, Sossy, a pastor from the village. Last summer’s DHE Tanzania group had met him quite spontaneously on a dala-dala ride and had done two short teaching sessions with the women he works with last summer. We met with Sossy and four of the woman who were part of the original briquetting group in Sossy’s center that he had built. We quickly learned, with Sossy as our translator, that the briquettes had completely failed the women’s cooking tests and they had since abandoned the operation. Yikes. But Sossy was eager to hear what new technology these four ambassadors from America had brought to Tanzania, a new fuel perhaps or something more exciting. James spent the succeeding fifteen minutes in a rather circular conversation explaining that, yes, we are still working with briquettes but this time they are different because they have charcoal with makes them burn much better and, no, we have no other technologies to teach. It was interesting how much Sossy expected us, the Americans, to swoop in and solve their problems for them. Once we had all sorted out exactly what DHE had to offer, the women still seemed a little skeptical of our briquetting offer and justifiably so as the briquettes they had made hadn’t worked out at all. We offered to make enough of our charcoal briquettes to bring to ten of the woman in the group for them to try to cook a meal on the briquettes as a test. If the women like the briquettes, we’ll be happy to teach them our new method for briquetting. This was an agreeable proposition for all.

The press the Moivaro women were using.

Through our conversation, we also learned that the average monthly wage for the workers in the greenhouses (the main employer in the area) in this community is 80,000 tsh. That’s $50 per month. The woman said they spend 45,000 tsh per month on fuel for cooking. Cooking fuel is more than half their monthly wage. Do you even know how much you spend on cooking fuel? I certainly don’t. For us it’s so negligible we don’t even think about it; it get all wrapped up with the electricity bill or the gas bill. Here, gathering firewood is illegal and charcoal is trucked in from farther and farther away as the government tries to discourage the production of charcoal to preserve the forests. Charcoal prices are rising and sometimes children are asked to wiggle through the fence surrounding a nearby hotel to forage for sticks in the hotel’s forest—dangerous due to the snakes and the security guards. It seems the government, in its valiant, and honestly necessary, effort to slow rampant deforestation, has left many woman like those in Moivaro without alternatives for the daily task of cooking food. Hopefully, if the woman are impressed by our briquettes, we’ll be able to spend more time with them to teach them the tricks we’ve learned about fuel production to make cheap, clean, and successful briquettes. I think a lofty, but attainable goal.

Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday were three more work days, unpacking the kiln, loading it up again, lighting it, making a briquette mixture with the haul of charcoal from the kiln and cassava porridge (we’re getting quite adept at making cassava porridge), pressing the briquettes, and leaving them to dry. We get into a rhythm and it’s actually quite enjoyable.

The four Dutch students arrived Wednesday (can I gush a little more and say how awesome they are?) and on Saturday two of their fellows from their field course who are interning in the Nairobi slums came down to visit for the weekend. On their bus down to Arusha, the rope that was holding all the luggage on the roof of the bus broke, and all the luggage flew off into the road. You always wonder if that ever happens. Well I guess it does.

We spent the weekend playing Resistance, reading (Hunger games is being passed around and devoured by everyone), walking, and generally relaxing. Now the sun is shining, my laundry is drying (clean underwear! Woohoo!), the road beyond our house has been explored (Emily and I took a nice long walk this morning to see what we could see. Lots of corn.), and Mt Meru is out in all its towering glory. Beautiful. A good way to pass a lazy Sunday.

I hope avocado is one of those miracle foods because I may soon turn green from all the fresh avocado I’m eating.