Blogs from West, Tanzania, Africa - page 13

It was past noon and sitting on the benches in the shade of steel-roofed gazebo was a small crowd of Africans and more white people than I was expecting. After the usual two or three hour wait, boarding was announced and we joined the queue that bottle-necked through the gate. Once onboard the MV Liemba we were assigned our berths and given our keys. The MV Liemba is a wonderful old iron ship and piece of history. Built the SS Graf von Götzen in Germany in 1913 for the colony of Deutsch-Ostafrika she was disassembled and transported in pieces from Europe to Africa and then halfway across the dark continent by rail to Kigoma on the shores of Lake Tanganyika. There the pieces were reassembled and she was commissioned in 1914. The SS Graf von Götzen ... read more

Today I went out to dig tube wells. These are narrow wells (about 3”) that we dig for use with treadle pumps. We don’t dig them deeper than 10m because that is the maximum lift available with our pumps. And that’s a really good thing because they are hand dug and it’s really hard and dirty work. In this particular location, the soil is mostly compressed sand, so that’s why there is someone sitting up on the auger. It’s actually the only way we could get the tip to bite into the soil. The even more discouraging thing was that after 5 hours of digging, we hit 10 meters without getting any water. So all we got from the work was tired and dirty, and we had to start all over again the next morning. I’m ... read more

Enterprise Works Tanzania (EW) has three areas it operates in: Tree Crops, Irrigation, and Seed Oil. With Tree Crops, they establish mother orchards with improved tree crop varieties (better tasting, larger fruit, more suitable to the local conditions). Teach farmers about grafting and budding to expand crops, as well various techniques to improve yields on fruit trees (pegging to induce early fruit, stripping leaves to force dormancy). They also cover management skills so they can establish their own nurseries. Recently they have also started to produce Band Saw Mills for lumber processing. These are produced with EW supervision at local workshops. Under Irrigation we do tube wells and treadle pumps. The funny thing about the pumps is that they are sold under the name of Mkombozi Pampu, which sort of translates as The Saviors Pumps. Our ... read more

The smell of burning leaves (and garbage) here. It’s not like the smell of a campfire in your back yard, or out in the mountains. It’s kind of like you can smell and taste the dust that is being burned. Also with smells, maize being roasted on a charcoal fire. As a kid I remember hiding them in the back of the car, so when we would go for drives my brother, sister and I would pick the kernels off one by one. Since we would leave them there for so long, they would actually be like slightly soft popcorn kernels, but luckily we only had baby teeth to break. Home made plastic bags to hold spices, nuts, popcorn… I have a very vivid memory of seeing a man in the market in Arusha with a ... read more

We headed out of Malawi which was a very relaxed place to stay by the beautiful lake and into Tanzania. We didn't make the border in one day from Ngata bay so ended up stopping for a night at the border with a couple of Americans on the same combi as us. After finding and guesthouse in the dark they lent us some lanterns and we got some great rice, beans and beer form a local restaurant. We changed some money with the guesthouse owners friends and got an early night - a little earlier than the two american girls who were up chatting through their closed door to the boys around the guesthouse who were offering them all sorts of things.. I think one of them said she had a stomach ache so was asked ... read more