Conclusion

Well, it's been a good run. 358 posts in just over three years. I've enjoyed sharing my experiences, though of late, blogging has begun to feel like more of a chore than a healthy way to express myself. I thought I would migrate over to Facebook or Twitter, but I've found myself spending a lot of time on Quora lately, so that's probably how I'll be expressing myself, at least for a little while now. I will leave the blog up for a while, but I don't expect that I'll come back to posting. Hope you've enjoyed the ride.

-Daniel

Holiday break

In spite of my rather reclusive tendencies over the past month and a half, last week was a pretty social week. Over the weekend, we had a couple of Americans come stay at our house (we're listed on AirBNB, so tell your friends!) They were really friendly and seemed to really enjoy their time in Arusha. Jodie put in a lot of effort to make sure the house looked beautiful for them and I made sure that they were well fed while they were here (yep, chapati burritos).

After they left, we piled into the car and drove to the beach. We stayed at a gorgeous campsite right on the water for four days. We bought mangoes and a jackfruit on the way and just spent 3 days soaking it all in. The ocean floor was covered with rocks, so it was nice to walk along the beach, but it wasn't great for swimming in the ocean. Instead, they had a nice little pool and we spent our time swimming there and playing with the kids of the other families spending the holidays there. The kids really liked having us throw them in the water (that definitely covered my daily workout) or help them with dives or give them dolphin rides (basically sitting on my back as I swam laps) and even played a game of king of the mountain where they let me be the mountain. Jodie and her friend Steff went out snorkeling and also spent the day on a fishing boat with our friend Jana and some local fishermen bringing back with some pretty impressive catches. I also had plenty of time to read (after seeing how much sun and seasickness they had on the boat rides, I was glad that had passed on it) and they had delicious meals for rather reasonable prices and we even brought Travel Scrabble.

We had to leave at 4:45 AM on Christmas Eve (my deepest apologies to all the neighboring tents for us packing up our tent at that hour) to catch a bus back to Arusha. My housemate Mic had driven us to the campsite, but he only stayed for a day and a half since he had to go back to Arusha for work. The bus ride was a bit uncomfortable since we were in the very back row (where there's no suspension as you travel along the bumpy roads), but we made really good time for the first 80% of the journey. It was really nice to get away from the coast before we had to deal with the sticky, sweaty afternoon weather. Unfortunately, making such good time during that stretch meant that the bus was really struggling the last 20%. We made it back to Arusha and were all relieved to grab a shower as soon as we were home.

The next day was Christmas, and even though we didn't have any festivities in mind, Jodie, Mic and I decided to cook a feast. Jodie baked a chocolate cake and a carrot cake while Mic grilled steak and steamed vegetables for lunch. I made some guacamole to go with lunch and cooked up some falafel for dinner. We also drank sangria all through the day.

All in all, it was a wonderfully relaxing holiday and much needed for all of us.

Local Animals

This is my dog Mandazi (or Dazi for short), which is like a Tanzanian donut. She's about 6 months old and we've had her for nearly 4.5 months. She wishes she were an inside dog, which is why she is trying to climb in our window here.

Dazi mostly eats fish, bread and milk (as well as leftovers). Sometimes, she takes it upon herself to track down rats from the drainage area and bring them home. It's pretty gross. Also, one time she bit our neighbor's chicken. The neighbor wasn't exactly thrilled.

This dog followed me for about a mile one day. I really liked him, but I knew that our neighborhood wouldn't appreciate me bringing another dog home. Still, I was impressed with how fast he could move on three legs. I even decided that I would call him Lefty. Is that cruel?

This was a massive turtle I saw right near our house. Too bad s/he was super-shy.

Infrequent

Seasons greetings, readers!

My apologies that I've written nothing about what's been going on in my life the last two months. This month, I fought off a couple of infections and I started sleeping incredibly erratic hours, so I haven't felt a lot like writing. And to be honest, there hasn't been a whole ton of excitement in my life. Still, I am hoping to get two more posts up here before the new year.

Stay tuned :)

Uganda Pedal Power Workshop Photos

Pader Community Technology Center Workshop

Working on bikes

David from Bikes Not Bombs, Denis and Wokorach from Pader

Bernard and me demonstrating the GCS phone charger

Bernard showing the charcoal crusher

Bernard attaching the charcoal crusher to a bicycle

The charcoal crushing mechanism

Running the charcoal crusher

Bicycle blender

Testing out the bicycle blender

Running the cassava grater

The added safety mechanism for the cassava grater

Cassava grater up close

Sorghum thresher design

Building the bicycle water cart

Testing the bicycle water cart

Bicycle water cart attachment

Pedal-power workshop in Uganda

See previous posts: Travel to Uganda and Preparing for Workshop

The workshop was a three day event, but I could only stay for the first two since I had to grab a bus to Nairobi to catch a flight. We started off by demonstrating some bicycle repair and maintenance skills. My station was on repairing flat tires. The one time I tried to fix my own flat, I wound up destroying the whole tire (not just the tube, mind you). Fortunately, I was staying in a guest house with Bernard, so the night before, he showed me how to do it and I got to practice. For the demo, four different groups came through and we looked at different types of tires (regular, racing and mountain) and then I used my nail to make a puncture as we all took turns using the tire iron, applying the patch and then checking for additional leaks. The participants also learned how to pack a bearing, how to spoke a tire and how to work on a chain.

After that, there was a session on identifying challenges, but I had to miss that one. After lots of hassle, we got a box of GCS equipment that morning (phone chargers and corn shellers), so I spent my time setting the kit up. By the time I finished setting things up (with some help from Bernard, since I was having an embarrassingly difficult time and for some reason couldn't apply basic problem solving skills), they were just finishing up the discussion.

Then, we demonstrated a few technologies that we had set up for the occasion. There was a charcoal crusher* that Bernard designed and built based off a project that he had worked on at IDDS in 2008. There was a peanut grinder using spare bicycle parts (everyone loved this one since we got to eat a sesame-peanut butter concoction that we prepared to show the machine). There was a blender that ran off the back wheel of a bicycle (people also enjoyed the smoothies that came out of this demo).

In the afternoon, we broke off into teams to work on the design challenges that they had chosen. I was working with a team of Caritas staff members who were looking at designing a sorghum thresher. All of the other participants had previously done a workshop with Amy, so they were familiar with the design process, but the Caritas staff had been a last minute addition. It was really interesting to see what it's like trying to design something with people as they try to decide the order of steps themselves (imagine watching someone build a house starting with the roof). I worked with them to try to guide them down the right path (identifying constraints before selecting design elements) and though it was a bit slower than usual, by the end of the day, we had an idea that we were happy with.

The second day was mostly building and testing ideas. It was a bit difficult with the sorghum threshing team since we didn't have dried sorghum that was ready for threshing, but they still produced a pretty nifty machine. Mid-morning we took a break and Bernard and I demonstrated the GCS technologies for everyone. People were really amazed to see the corn sheller work and were also very excited by the bicycle phone charger. Everyone kept passing up their phone to see if it could be charged by the bicycle (they all could). It was really unfortunate that shipping is such an expense, because it definitely drives the price beyond the means of the communities.

All of the sessions were translated from English into Acholi, the local language, by the Caritas staff. I had to leave after the second day, which was really sad. At dinner that night, the participants gave me an Acholi name. They called me Otam, which means the thinker. I think they just saw me constantly staring at bicycles and could hear the wheels turning in my head. I was really touched by everyone there. I was a little disappointing that the only words that I learned in Acholi were "hello" "thank you" and "good". Still, I managed to get pretty far with those as well as lots of wild gesturing.

I also really enjoyed the food in the community. Every morning, we ate a very hearty cassava stew with very sugary tea. Then lunch and dinner were a mixture of greens (but not kale like I usually eat in Kenya and Tanzania) with posho (the Ugandan term for what we call ugali in Kiswahili), rice with beans, peanut stew (really delicious) and roasted goat. We were definitely full at the end of every meal.

* It was fun that this was included, since it meant that Amy and I got to run a charcoal burn the night before to provide the material for the demonstration.

Preparing for the Pedal Power Workshop

Amy Smith has made several trips to northern Uganda and run workshops there on Creative Capacity Building and the design process. Her partner on the ground is Caritas, a Catholic organization that runs relief programs across the country. We (Amy, Bernard and I) were traveling north in a Caritas vehicle, which was a welcome change after some long bus rides.

As we traveled, we admired the scenery, and Michael (the driver) talked about the landscape and the history. He reminded us that some people did well during Idi Amin's reign who have now seen their standard of living drop during the presidency of Yoweri Museveni. Amy and I both noted that much of the scenery was much greener than what we're used to seeing (she used to live in Botswana in the Kalahari desert, while my experiences in Kenya saw lots of sparse landscapes). Michael mentioned the dangers of it as we drove through a pine forest and he explained that when the needles fall to the ground and dry out, the fires can be devastating. Then we started talking about pine needle gasification and inevitably to other simple technologies.

We arrived in Gulu and met David from Bikes not Bombs (BNB) who was also running the workshop. He had gone shopping and grabbed a few bikes as well as tons of spare parts for the sessions that we were going to run. David was collecting footage of a health project that BNB is running in another nearby community, so he left us with the supplies and returned to the village. We visited the Caritas office in Gulu and picked up a few more supplies at the market before heading to Pader.

When we reached Pader and were greeted by my friend Denis who was on my team at IDDS in Ghana. He showed us the community technology center that Amy had established there and I recognized several of the machines there from other programs that I've done with Amy. We set to work organizing the space so that it would be ready for the event. We were still missing one box (as stated in the last post, Kampala Coach had left our luggage behind), so we couldn't set up the GCS equipment. Instead, I set to work cleaning out a peanut butter maker which had not been cleaned in several months. After that, I designed a table and took inventory of all the supplies in the workshop. Meanwhile, Bernard set about creating a bicycle powered charcoal crusher to serve as an example.

We had 1.5 days in Pader before the participants arrived, so it was also a good opportunity to learn our way around the town a bit. Wokorach, the other staff member at the workshop, helped me buy some tools at the market and talked about the difficulties of life in the area. We also spent an evening at Denis's house where his wife cooked a delicious supper, and spent the whole time complaining that the large spread wasn't nearly enough food and she didn't like that we were rushing back to the workshop. I also took full advantage of MTN Mobile Money (another phone banking system similar to Safaricom's Mpesa), which has taken the bulk of the mobile banking market in Uganda (although when I was in Kampala, I noticed that there were several agents for Kenya's and Tanzania's mobile money systems in spite of the fact that they don't work with Ugandan sim cards).

I also had the opportunity to meet the local Caritas staff. It was most remarkable to talk with Jennifer, who is a social worker and helped us with the translation during the event. Her stories were terrifying and she told them with such non-chalance that it was difficult to contemplate the horrors that many of these people had lived through. Rather than letting the stories depress us, though, we saw it as a testament to the resilience of the community and saw it as a great motivator for running this workshop.

This is a map of northern Uganda that was painted in the Caritas office in Gulu. I thought it was really nifty.