Moved to Africa

First, I want to apologize for not getting a blog out sooner. I could say I was really busy, which I pretty much was, or I can tell you the truth, I was lazy about getting my blog done.

Now we have that out of the way and guilt has been lifted let’s get on to the blog. I have decided to move to Africa and I’m currently living again in Dar es Salaam Tanzania. 

Update from my last blog

After Gulu, I came back to DAR, spent one day, unpacking and repacking for my journey back to the US. I arrived in the US on Feb 15, stayed with my good friend Hanumant, since my house was now gone. While in Seattle I got all my stuff done, medical checkups, visit to Dallas to see Brynn, side trip to Alaska where I got to meet with a friend I had not seen for several years, visit to MN to see family, sold my truck, and put what was left in storage. All was complete for my return back to Africa on Apr 1. But the project was not ready, so I had to wait until Apr 19 to leave.

In Alaska watching the Iditarod Race

During my first stint in Africa, Indie the dog had been staying with his BFF Koda at the O’Neils house, my previous neighbor in Redmond. With my upcoming return to Africa, this time for one year or more, I felt I needed to find a more permanent solution for Indie. A family in Ashland, Oregon, with young triplets was the perfect fit, they previously had a lab. Met them in Eugene to drop off Indie, which was an extremely sad experience. Indie is a GREAT dog, I will miss him dearly. The pictures I get from them sound like it was the right decision, thank you Andy, Molly and the family!

Indie enjoying the waters of SF

So I arrived on Monday night, went right to work on Tues, on Wednesday had to fly to Zanzibar to help set up a demo for USAID. Zanzibar is a great place. It is called the “Spice Islands” and it's made up of several islands, with two main islands Unguja and Pemba. We stayed in Stonetown, on the main island of Unguja, an old village that was once famous (not good famous) as the transfer spot for the African slave trade.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zanzibar_Archipelago

  

Zanzibar teachers learning new tools for the classroom

Students seeing a computer for the first time

Zanzibar is also the hometown of Freddie Mercury of Queen. They have a bar named after him, Mercury’s, where we proceeded to have a few Kilimanjaro beers. It is located right on the beach, so great sunsets, and the occasional beach hawker trying to sell us anything. The best is when they come up to you selling CD’s and starting singing the most popular songs of Tanzania. 

But by far, the best part of Zanzibar is Stonetown, you can wander around the small, narrow passageways of the city with the most amazing architecture. But, beware of the motos coming around any blind corner and running your ass over. There is no way they could have electric motos, no noise, no way to know they are coming, you would be run over daily.

One night, we had dinner at the top of the Emerson Hotel, many flights up the stairs, no elevators, to the roof. Had the most amazing view of the city and listened to the competing mosques calling out their nightly prayers, so magical. The meal was outstanding.

We flew back from Zanzibar, we fly on a small 20+ seat Cesena’s. Our plane was full today, actually there was room for me, but someone brought their cat in a kennel. So I was tapped on shoulder and asked to sit in the co-pilot seat, so cool. Our pilot was an Australian woman, I told her not to worry I was not going to touch anything. She replied, “there is nothing you can do I can’t fix”. Ok, ground rules are set. So off we went, best seat in the plane and got to watch the radar as we flew into a storm.

My view on the trip back, good thing I have been using Microsoft Flight Sim

Back in Dar for a few days as we packed for the demo in Mtwara, than off to Mtwara where we spent several days setting up for more demonstrations.

We all have to trench

The team installing the sw on the laptops

And the best part, the kids using the laptops

 

Three to a laptop

After Mtwara, it was back to DAR to do a retraining class for the engineers. It was in the infamous “sweat shop”, but now that it’s rainy season, not the hot season, it’s actually not bad. The only issue with rainy season is the roof leaks, but that is a much easier fix, except when it rains hard on the tin roof, then we have to stop class for a few minutes because no one can hear.

Training is complete and we’re now ready to install, the original schedule had the installs starting Jan 2, but that is a longer story. We’re about to start the installs in Mtwara, then the riots start, several people are killed and we hit the brakes on the installations before we could ship equipment.

Ok, time for some Mtwara local information. Recently, Mtwara found a large amount of natural resources, we’ll call it natural gas. Tanzania is planning on building a pipeline from Mtwara to DAR and process all the gas in DAR. The people of Mtwara, generally a poor area of Tanzania, want the jobs and gas to stay in Mtwara and build a bigger port, thus the riots. So as we are waiting, we continue to work in the warehouse, getting all the things ready, tool boxes, team uniforms, etc. But there is also fun time.

On Sunday June 1, it was the annual Goat Races for Charity http://goatraces.com/, this annual event races money for several local charities. Not only can you bet on the goats, and win (not much), but there is a beer/wine/food garden. This seems to be the BIG ex-pat event of the year and it was packed, not only that, it was a pretty hot that day. After betting and losing the first five races, (I personally think there were only 10 goats that they changed their outfits between each race to make it look like there were over 100 goats) it was time to spend the rest of the afternoon sampling some Kilimanjaro Beer. Not that I really need to sample it, I really know what it tastes like, but sampling sounds a bit classier. Considering how the afternoon and evening went I need all the help I can get. Our group is likely to have funded a major world charity project based on the amount of beer and stuff we drank. It’s much easier when you can say I’m drinking for charity. But we got to meet and hang out with some wonderful people. That night, instead of calling it a day, like most people did, it was off the QBar for the “after the goat races party”. This is a local bar that has a great mix of locals, expats, some working ladies, and lots of music, this creates a great environment and wonderful people watching experience. We left around 1am, pouring ourselves into a Bajaj for the ride home and recovery the next day.

The first times I came to Tanzania in 2003, it was to start the Kilimanjaro Porter Assistance Project with my good friends Donovan and Carrie. One weekend we came to DAR and experienced the same goat races. Wow, ten years later and back at the goat races.

 

The weekends also get us out to the local island of Bongoyo. It’s a 40 min boat ride, really several boat rides to get to this national marine park. We have to get on a small boat, that takes us to a larger boat for the long ride, and then transfer to a smaller boat to land on the beach. It’s a nice trip and the island is speckled with handful of thatched large umbrellas and chairs to get out of the sun. They also have fresh caught fish for lunch, we know it’s fresh because we see the fisherman bringing the fish to the kitchen from their boats parked on the beach. There is also a small tide pool of eels, they like to hang around because they get the fish guts when the kitchen clean the fish. When the tide comes up, they seem to just stay put, we swim on the other side of the island. After a day of being in the sun and some great fish, we return to the mainland through the same boating process. Some of you have asked about safety, we’ll there is no safety on these boats, in fact I rarely see a life jacket. The ones I do see say “Not to be used in or near water”. Good news is that I can swim and likely I can get to shore. It makes you think about how you pack, if there is something important or can’t get wet, leave it at home.

So back to installations, since Mtwara is still pretty dicey, we decide to send all the teams to Zanzibar and start the installs. So we start packing the warehouse, 7 medium size trucks show up at the warehouse, 100’s of batteries, solar panels, and boxes of computers are loaded into the trucks. These trucks are driven onto a truck ferry for Zanzibar and then unloaded into the local warehouse. Eric and I head over to Zanzibar on the high speed ferry vs. fly, we are with our install team of 28 strong. The first day is prep, the equipment still has not arrived, so we take a small team to some of the schools to do pre-checks. Thursday and Friday are installation days, we take all 28 people, 9 teams, to Kama school. Since this school has 9 solar classrooms to install, it works perfect, each team gets a classroom. The next day at Mwenge, 9 classrooms, we do a grid powered (with battery backup) install, so once again each team gets to do an installation.

The ship that carries the 7 trucks of equipment

The nice ferry for the teams, top deck, really fast

Installing the power cages

Talking to the students who will be using the computers

The installation team!!!!

The installations have finally begun. I was asked to work on this project last July, when I had returned from Haiti, it has been a long, many times difficult adventure. But at the end of the day, it’s seeing the children’s face when you get out of the truck to start the install and then when they see a computer for the first time, that is why I’m here!!!

This trip I got to hang out with Paul and Eric. Paul is the logistics person to help move the equipment around, interestingly he is from Portland Oregon. He is 72 years old and a retired Marine, because there are no ex-Marines. He has worked logistics for years and he came out of retirement to help a friend on this project. Eric, who I knew the first time in DAR is the power expert on the project, he lives on Orcas Island and is the owner of Solar Nexus International, we were roommates on this trip. The three us were together much of this trip, not only the warehouse and Zanzibar to work, but goat races, Bongoyo island, Qbar, movie nights, and general many nights out around town. We had some great times, I’ll miss them around here, but we plan to meet again in Portland when I finally show back up in the US. Strange the connection to the Pacific Northwest. Sadly Kim Kardashian is ruining the name North West by naming her soon to be spoiled child that name, WTF? Bet she can't find NW on the map, bet she can't find a map.

Eric on the roof with the solar team

Unpaid advertisement

I’m known here to have everything in my bag. Traveling to a lot of remote locations you learn to carry stuff with you because you never know what you need when you need it. One of my favorite new toys is my Jambox, this is a Bluetooth speaker with a built in mic so I can use if for skype calls too. But best is to run Songza off my iphone and play it on my Jambox, it is compact and great sound. If you travel, get one!

Now that Eric and Paul have left I decided to move into a smaller apartment, one bedroom. It’s on the 2^nd floor, brighter than the last place and breezy, have yet to turn on the AC, very nice, but have been getting more power outages, Africa. Now I need something to move around the bugs at night, waiting for a fan from the office, otherwise maybe back to a bug net, they are no fun.

Many of you may know Obama is coming to Africa, not just Africa, coming to Dar es Salaam, so over the next weeks it will be crazy here with all the advanced teams, security, traffic, etc. May run to Zanzibar or Uganda and get away those days.

What is next?

So I’m now finished with my contract with USAID/TZ21 and starting to close on my next adventure. Should have more info on my next blog, promise to be more frequent.

Brynn is coming to visit late July/early August as she transitions from the US to do a 2 year school program in Beijing. Will be great to have her visit and do safari and beach time, hmmmm, where to go?????