Ramona and Ross in Africa

It is time to Go Home

2010-08-04T00:32:00.000-07:00

Well, these are our last words
For those who have not heard

We came to spend two year
Now our time to leave is quite near

Our times have been glad
So departing is sad

We did a lot of drilling
Which was altogether quite thrilling

We found plenty of good water
Then made pump slabs from mortar

The pumps we did set
And water; the villagers did get

We did some computer training
While the weather was still raining

We drove through game parks
To see animals saved on the Ark

Now we have donated some clothes
To the more needy of those

And it is time to go home
From thither; we will else roam

Gorillas in the Mist

2010-07-17T06:32:00.000-07:00

It was like being in Jurassic park. I heard a soft but loud Ummmph sound and then another. There was a rustling in the bushes in front of me but nothing could be seen. Then more grunts and further leaf shaking but still nothing to see. Wow this is awesome. We kept walking forwards.

While on our Kenya trip we caught a plane over to Entebbe in Uganda and met up with a tour operator who took us on a trip across Uganda down to the south west corner to a little town called Kisoro just a few km from the Rwanda and Congo borders. This is where the thick jungles are and the home of the large mountain gorillas. This is also the region where Dian Fossey spent a lot of her research time with the gorillas and Kisoro was the town she stayed in when not in the bush.

The drive from Entebbe to Kisoro is about 10 hour drive, it is a long haul. And this is driving at crazy speeds not the normal speeds we drive at. I had to ask the drive to slow down several times as I thought getting a little child run over was imminent or passing on blind corners was an unnecessary risk. He was a good driver though so not too many grey hairs were added. Along the drive we crossed the equator which made a good photo opportunity. Uganda is very green compared to Tanzania. Especially in the SW there were farms carved out in terraces on all the hills. The terraces make little flat areas to put crops on. The driver said ‘this was the African Alps without the snow’. It is quite hilly but they are all covered with this patch work of terraces and their various coloured crops, which made a very pretty back drop. Like a big patch work quilts thrown over the hills.

The road was poor but it was being worked on in various places by road crews . Hence once again, next year it will be a nice drive. It is great what progress happens in election years. The driver said it was the last of the main roads to seal in Uganda.

The lodge we were put in was called The Travellers Rest, run by a Dutch couple and considering where we were it was very nice indeed. There was a lot of Congolese art work and masks around, the place some quite detailed and ornate giving it this out of the ordinary appearance. Ramona finds the masks spooky.

The next morning was an early start as it was a 40 km (25 m) drive up in the mountains on a bad road to get to the park headquarters. That took about 1-1/2 hours. The Bwindi Impenetrable Forest takes 8 people per day to see a specific group of Gorillas. The idea is to hike into the jungle to find them, then once there sit with them for an hour then hike back out again. So we joined 6 other people, 2 Aussies, 2 Italians, and 2 Dutchies. After a brief talk on the day by the head guide, they gave us long walking sticks which soon became very evident why, then we headed off up into the bush.

This is no ordinary bush walk. This is the country legends are made of. It is quite steep, dense bush in most places, lots of undergrowth and tall trees. Thankfully it was dry and not wet and slippery. Earlier in the day the park sends off trackers to the last spot the gorillas were sighted at the previous day, then they start tracking them to see where they went to overnight. Once on the gorillas trail they radio back to the guide leading us and give directions of where to do. Sounds simple but doesn’t always work. The radios don’t work down in deep gullies so we have to climb to ridges to get reception. This would take an hour or so. Then the trackers have to try to describe where they are in this dense bush to the guide. All the gullies and ridges looked the same to me. The hills are so steep that is why the long sticks are needed to push in downhill before you step down using the stock as an anchor. We hiked along for about 5 hours, down in gullies, in little streams, crawling under fallen trees and vines at times. At about 3 pm it was clear that if we were to get out by dark we’d have to turn back soon. I had the impression we had not been hiking in a straight line for 5 hours, so it shouldn’t take us 5 hours to get back hopefully.

All of a sudden the guide up front said ‘stop’, the trackers were close and the gorillas were not far away coming towards us. We slipped off our packs dug out the cameras. Leaving the packs there, we started moving forward through the trees and ferns. It was like being in Jurassic park. I heard a soft but loud Ummmph sound and then another. There was a rustling in the bushes in front of me but nothing could be seen. Then more grunts and further leaf shaking but still nothing to see. Wow this is awesome. Then coming into a little low canopy covered clearing we could see the gorillas, some sitting, some on the move on the other side of the clearing. (They were oblivious to us from the 100s of previous visits to their group by other human trekkers. It takes years of visits by guides and rangers to habitualise a group of gorillas to the presence of humans.) The group we came across had about 20 or so in it. We could not see them all at any one time due to the bush. There were a couple of big silverbacks (older males that get silver hair down their backs). They are huge. Shoulders are very broad compared to a man, with a huge head on them. Wide hips too. They walk on two legs and lean on their front arms. The group had mothers, young ones and a few babies clinging to their mothers. One big silverback stopped right down in front of us just a few meters (yards) away and bent down like do a push up to put his mouth in the stream to take a drink, just like a human would. Weird and an eerie feeling to see human like behaviour from this big animal. One of the silverbacks came and sat about 4 m (yd) from me and just put his back to me. I noticed another had done a similar thing. I guessed they did that to show us they knew we were there but they didn’t care and were ignoring us. The juveniles were playing chase with each other swinging on low branches, jumping on each other. We took a lot of photos and videos. (Many of which didn’t come out unfortunately as the camera would focus instead on the braches between us and not on the gorillas. The camera experts did get some good shots however I believe.) After about 40 mins the big silverback leader sort of ordered the group to move on and the disappeared off into the bush. By now it was after 4pm. The guide said if we didn’t mind we should head back so as not to get caught in the bush in the dark. Sounded like a good idea to all of us so off we went. The first thing was to climb out of this deep gully up a steep climb for about an hour to get on top of the ridge. Ramona said if we have to do that 3 more times, we’d be very late getting out. I guessed though that once on top of a ridge the guides would stay on top and we’d walk out a lot easier than when we’d come in. Which turned out to be the case and we got back to the car a 7 pm just after dark. Then it was a 2 hr drive in the dark back to the Travellers Rest lodge. Needless to say we were trashed and tired. They had kept a late hot meal for us which was very well received.

The next day we sort of rested. We took a local guide out to a nearby lake on the Uganda-Congo border and found this guy with a canoe made from a single dug out tree. It was, in local terms a freight canoe, as it was quite long, about 8 m (25 ft). He paddled us around the lake shore a bit then we walked back through some local farms back to the start point. The guide was explaining the different crops to us. Later in the day we talked with the hotel manager about his time in Uganda and goings on in the Congo. We walked around the little town a bit to see what was there which apart for dust from road construction, wasn’t much. The 4th day was the 10 hour drive back to Entebbe.

The area around that part of Africa is called Volcanoes park as there are a string of large volcanoes on the Uganda, Rwanda and Congo border just a few km away. Beautiful symmetric mountains rising up to dominate the southern skyline. One has the triple international border on the very top of it. Guides will take climbers up there, but we needed another day had we have wanted to do that

Mt Kenya Climb

2010-07-11T07:51:00.001-07:00

From Nairobi We did a 6 day trip to climb Mt Kenya. It is the 2nd highest mountain in Africa so worth a look we thought. Our cousin in Nairobi dropped us off at the pickup point that day we were to start. A driver first drove us the 4 hours up to Nanyuki where the hiking guys met us. Our group consisted of a guide, a cook and three porters plus us two. We only needed therefore to carry our day packs with water, a warm jacket, pants gloves etc in it if we were to need them.

The first day was a 9 km hike from the park gate up to a hut along a 4WD vehicle track. It was up to an altitude of 3000 m (10,800 ft), it was dark when we got there and the temp was falling quite a lot. We had expected to be in little tents, but found out we were in a bunk hut. Being out of the wind made it so much warmer. A bunk bed with a mattress, what a luxury we had. Still it was quite chilly. Hot soup and a big meal from the cook helped. Way more food than we could eat however.

From that hut, the next day’s trail was up a big valley to the peak region. A full day’s hike but beautiful scenery. We were passing these cactus like vegetation. Groundsel and Lobelia, very different to conventional plants. Near the head of the valley we were walking through a forest of these plants, very surreal like something off a Star Trek Episode. Unlike Mt Kilimanjaro which is a huge conical single mountain, Mt Kenya, originally was a much broader mountain and erupted much longer ago than Kilimanjaro so it is more weathered. The original volcano shape has gone, no crater or such, but just these soaring high columns of rock sticking up into the air. The Mountain has multiple peaks clustered into one region which is where the cone must have formerly been. The two highest you can’t trek to as they are almost 1000 m high columns of vertical rock face. The third peak which is where everyone hikes to, can be reached by a rock scramble for the last 100 m. Picture this region as this central region where all the peaks spring up then leading radially away down from that region are these big U shaped carved valleys scouged out by massive glaciers eons ago. In amongst these peaks towers there are still glaciers. A beautiful rugged site.

Ramona’s Birthday was the next and we started to do a hike about ½ way around the peaks in an anticlock wise direction. With the rock peaks to out left and the big U shaped valleys on our right we circuited around ½ of the peak region. At some point we were walking on a path on the side of a cliff, the massive rock face just meters away on the left and the cliff then falling down into the valley on our right. Not so narrow as to be dangerous but very exhilarating to be there is this massive set of structures all standing together.

Getting to the actual trekking summit was the goal of day 4. We hiked a few hours up to a hut at the base of the rock towers. From there one of the glaciers was to the left at the base of the two highest rock towers, the trekking peak called Pt Leanna was high in front of us about 500 m (1/4) mile away. The guide took us off up towards the Leanna peak. It was a bright sunny though rather cool day. The going started off easy then got trickier as we scrambled up rocks to get higher. At some points it was quite narrow with a potential big fall to the left and big rocks on the right. I was right behind Ramona with the left hand out ready to catch her in case she slipped. She was fine though and after 40 mins climbing and hauling ourselves up rocks we got on the top rock little plateau. 4985 m (16,300 ft). Only the two twin rock towers to the west a few 100 m away were higher than us now. The view was for miles and very clear. There were clouds down below us further out. There was a flag pole on top with a rigid flag on it that was half falling down. We spent a 15 mins or so taking pictures and then started back down. Lunch was back at the hut. From there we stated walking down the eastern valley to the camp site for the night. About a 4 hr walk. Along the way was a memorial metal plaque bolted to a cliff face where a plane had crashed a 3 or so years ago in which a South African family of parents and 3 kids & pilot had smacked into the cliff and all perished. That night we did camp in a little 2 man tent and it was freezing all night. Brrrr. It was at a designated camping area around which there were some small lakes called Tarns. But the trash from other campers was quite bad and left a bad impression on us.

The Temple point was the start of Days 5 hike. This was a rock cliff not far from where we had camped. It towered over the Gorges valley we were to follow out that day. The bottom of the valley was vertically way down below us. The Temple point was a shear rock cliff that we were on top of. It was nerve wracking to get near the edge and peer over it. Wow what a drop. While on the cliff edge two helicopters came for a tourist fly around. They flew down the Gorges valley and they were way below us just little things. As we walked out the wild flowers out along the way were striking. So many varieties and colours. Along the way I saw a bunch of strewn shiny things on the ridge on the other side of the Gorges valley about 1 km (1/2 m away) . I asked the guide if that was another wreck? ‘Yep’ he said ‘about 20 yrs ago and no one has gone to clean up the wreckage’. The 6th day was a hike out and a ride back to Nairobi.

A beautiful mountain with spectacular scenery, fauna and geology to awe at.

A Trip to Nairobi in Kenya

2010-07-08T06:57:00.000-07:00

Thought we had never contacted him before, we knew we had a cousin from New Zealand, living in Nairobi for many years. We had planned a couple of big adventure trips based out of Kenya so thought it would be a good time to catch up with our cousin at the same time and see what he has been up to.

The road from Arusha north to Nairobi is about 300 km (180 miles). The border is little town called Namunga. We drove our Pajero up there and in order to drive a vehicle across an international border there are a few rules to follow otherwise it won’t happen. As you approach Namunga there are no signs to tell you where to go or what to do. Turns out you have to go to Tanzania immigration to fill out a departure card, hand in the original vehicle registration card for the vehicle in another building, then go to Kenya immigration fill out a arrival card and get a visa, then in another building, sign your vehicle into Kenya. Not too bad really but with no signs or officials there, it is confusing. All the while there are merchandise vendors following you trying to sell you Maasai jewellery, international vehicle insurance, vehicle fire extinguishers and more. So anyway we got through after an hour and continued heading on to Nairobi.

The roads are currently very bad, with diversions in many places, but all along in both countries the roads are being worked on by road construction crews. So some time next year that road all the way from Arusha to Nairobi will be a beautiful sealed road and a pleasant drive. Our average speed was about 50 km/h (30 mph) for the 7 hours.

With texting our cousin Steve along the way we were able to meet him on the road before entering the CBD. We followed him out to his house out south West of Nairobi. We were there for a few days then took off on a 6 day hike to Mt Kenya then back to Steve’s again for a couple of more days then off to Uganda for 6 days to see the Gorillas in the jungle. Then back to his house for another day then headed back to Arusha in Tanzania.

Out of Africa
Steve and his partner live out west of Nairobi in an area called Karen which is where Karen Blixen had her farm early in the 1900s. Karen Blixen was the feature of the movie ‘Out of Africa’ with Meryl Streep and Robert Redford. By now, 80 years later, the farm has all been subdivided into ½ to 10 acre blocks. It is where a lot of the wealthier expats and locals live in Nairobi. The roads are quite good; all the houses are surrounded by big well trimmed hedges and fences. Steve’s house is about 300 m from her original house. The Blixen house has large well trimmed grounds, all of which has been turned into a museum now. The movie was filmed in this house. Some of the nostalgia of Karen’s time in Africa still remains in the neighbourhood; it is quiet, groomed with big trees. You can feel the past as you walk around the grounds imagining the nearby coffee farm, the elephants in the then bush running past the house and of taking tea with friends in the warm evening sun and looking up into the distant Ngong hills where she buried her friend Denys Finch Hatton after his plane crashed in Tsavo.

Etara
On the first day we were there, they took us to a local pre wedding ceremony. The groom to be was a Kikuyu (the main tribe about central Kenya and also the president is a Kikuyu as well). The bride to be is from Uganda. This ceremony is an old tradition where the bride and her relatives are invited over to the grooms house to meet the family and perform an Etara ritual. In the earlier days, after the wedding, the bride would take over all the house hold duties of the groom and that involved collecting firewood to cook on. They would store the firewood on a mantel above the fire so it would dry out faster. The mantel is called Etara in Kikuyu. The people now days get all dressed up in their finest to attend this ceremony. The Kenyan men were all in suits and the ladies in designer dresses. The Ugandan men were in a traditional skirt like wrap and the women were all dressed in traditional Ugandan dresses. Very colourful and impressive. Steve’s partner loaned us some clothes to get dressed up a bit. The ceremony was out the back of a big house in a marquee tent. Lots of food and drink. They had an MC to conduct the afternoon and several people gave speeches about what the commitment to a marriage means and not to be taken lightly. Some were serious and some quite funny. Quite a contrast to Tanzania. The higher degree of wealth is quite obvious.

Steve has an amazing range of stores to tell of what he has experienced in Africa, some quite potentially dangerous to him and other so absurd you have to laugh even though that stuff really goes on. He has learned so much in order to survive as a mzungu in an African country. Way more than we have ever seen and learned in our brief time here. One evening out by the BBQ he said the Kikuyu have a saying here, ‘when you get the dust of Africa on your shoes, it is hard to get off’

One morning he took us around the corner to a Giraffe center where people can hand feed the Giraffes. The people stand on a deck around a display room, up above the ground and wardens give out food pallets. These ever so elegant animals come over and slowly and gracefully eat the pallets out of your hand. Very cool.

Bye Bye Babati

2010-07-07T07:09:00.000-07:00

As we were coming to the end of June we needed to say goodbye to the people and the project in Babati. We had been there on and off since February working with the drillers to drill more water wells. However a series of delays by the rainy season, break downs of the drill rig and tooling, waiting on funds transfer for more fuel and the likes meant we had not been able achieve anywhere the progress we had wanted to gain by this date. We had other commitments already in place and so it was time to leave Babati. Not having reached our goal made it hard to leave though. It had seemed back in February that there had been plenty of time to finish the drilling, but these delays after delays had thrown a big wrench in any plans and expectations. The project local staff thanked us for our time there and graciously gave us parting gifts of a Kanga wrap for Ramona and a Maasai Shuka wrap for Ross. Even some of the staff at the little motel we had been staying at and whom we had gotten to know quite well, shed a few tears at our departure. It is hard to tell people you are leaving them and not coming back. They always say ‘Karibu tena’ which means ‘welcome back again’.

All throughout the Babati Project we had been working on and off with Darren of PCI USA who is the donor for the Babati project. He is the coordinator between PCI and the project. The locals had problems pronouncing his name and it came out like Darn, so that was the name he was stuck with in Babati. Darren was from the USA and used to live in Austin Texas as we did a few years ago. So we had a lot in common with him. We have become good friends and will miss working with him and his intelligent sense of humour that he never seemed to run out of. Darren is staying with the project till it is finished early next year and we wish him all the best with his work in years to come.

In one of the last days in Babati we drove to one of its outer sub villages to inspect 7 proposed drilling sites. These were all tucked up under the escarpment of part of the Great Rift. There must have been a thermal region not too deep underground at one of these places called Maji ya Moto (hot water) as here they showed us hot water coming out of the ground. The people said the villagers would come there every Friday to bath in the hot water. We never out found if that was mixed bathing or not. At another place there was a little mound that had steam coming from it. The top was quite spongy and would bounce up and down when jumped on. Hot mud could be seen in little vents. The local people said this mound was growing all the time so it appeared to be a very early stage Volcano we concluded! Let's see what it is in a 100 years!

Mount Hanang Climb

2010-07-07T05:51:00.000-07:00

The drilling in Babati has been going slow with delays due to breakdowns, and waiting on getting refuelled. (There are multiday delays in getting funds transferred here). There are only so many days you can wait around in a little motel before you get an itch to do go do something else. We had seen this high mountain out west of Babati and had learned it was called Mount Hanang, the 4th highest mountain in Tanzania. It looked like a great mountain rising steeply and symmetrically out of the surrounding dry plains. The Lonely Planet book said there was a contact in Babati who would arrange climbs of the mountain. So we found his office and arranged to do the climb over the weekend. It was a 2-1/2 day trip, one day to travel to Katesh, the town at the base of Hanang and get the local government permits, the next day to climb and come down and the third day to return back to Babati. Another VSA volunteer Katherine working only a few hours from Babati joined us for the trip. The road from Babati to Katesh is a rough dirt/gravel dusty dusty road and requires slow driving in a small vehicle. Since it was not too far, 120 km (70 miles), we opted to take a bus there and back. How bad could it be? The climbing guide met us at the bus stand in Babati and had arranged the purchase of bus tickets for us all. It was an 11 am bus we were to catch, but turns out that 11 am means the bus will not leave before 11 am but can leave any time after that when it is full. They keep cramming more people with boxes and sacks of who knows what into spare seats and the isle. Finally at 12:30 we left for Katesh, filled to the hilt, many people standing in the isle and sitting in temporary seats. At about the ½ way point was another stop where people got on and off. The bus stopped on a little hill, and the attendant had to jump off the bus and put chocks under the wheels to stop the bus running backwards. Then onwards with dust wafting in covering any and everything.

After arriving at Katesh we were taken off for a small meal of rice and beans then to check into the guest house which while very basic was quite OK. At night the guide and a friend of his from Katesh took us to a little bar down the road to watch a World Cup soccer game on a TV. It was a little 14” like screen with a bunch of people seated around trying to watch it. Needless to say we were the only Mzungus there. The electric power was off in Katesh that night so there was no power. The TV was running off a little generator. After about 20 mins it ran out of fuel and that was the end of the TV, before the game even started! Then we decided to go get a meal somewhere before it got too late. The guide took us to this basic restaurant down this dark street as there were no lights. Inside the restaurant it was dark but they bought out a few candles. More rice and beans.

We started walking at 6 am the next day, it was a few km to the start of the mountain and then a gradual rise through some forests followed by steeper and steeper climbs the higher we got. The mountain is only 3400 (11,100 ft) high so there was foliage all the way up to the top. Lots of wild flowers out along the way. Being the end of the rainy season it was a good time to be there. It took us about 7 hours to get up to the top. The guides had bought up a packed lunch that we sat and ate while looking out over the plains far below. Quite an amazing site. The mountain is quite steep so once on top it is almost like looking out of an aeroplane. The plains were almost directly below us and stretched off into the distant horizon. We could see over to other places we had visited on earlier trips, the Ngorongoro crater game park, Lake Eyasi, and part of the Great Rift escarpment running North-South.

The trip down was about 5-6 hours, making a 14 hour day. We were trashed by the time we got back to Katesh, those last few km along the flat seemed to take ages. We sank wearily into seats at the same restaurant as the previous night and had more rice and beans and a bottle of Coke. It was all so good.

The bus trip back to Babati was similar to the one over. They just keep piling more and more people into them, trying to maximise the cash intake per trip much to the discomfort of the passengers. The attendant got into a brief tussle with one passenger over what we never knew and wanted to stay out of.

Visit to Victoria Falls, Zambia

2010-04-09T05:32:00.001-07:00

Over Easter, we took a long weekend and flew down to Livingstone in southern Zambia to visit the Victoria Falls. At 1.5 km wide and 100 m high, the falls are an impressive site at any time of the year. At this time of the year, it is rainy season and the falls were in full flow. There is normally white water rafting in the canyons below the falls, but with such a high flow rate, they had cancelled that activity.
The falls are part in Zimbabwe and part in Zambia, but given the government forced decline in Zimbabwe, almost all tourists stay on the Zambian side nowadays. Zambia was a pleasant surprise, at least the small parts we saw of it. Good roads, almost every one speaks English, western clothes are common, and no power outages while we were there. Livingstone is quite the tourist area with many of the modern facilities run by South Africans. The town itself is somewhat dilapidated, but the road to the falls, 11 k away has many new hotels, shopping plazas, and restaurants catering to the more wealthy tourists. Livingston gets its name from Dr David Livingston the famous explorer back in the 1800s who bought news of Africa and its highlights to the then western world.

There are many activities set up for tourists to do and most hotels have an activities office which organise the bookings. The operators then come and pick you up from the hotel and drop you off afterwards if desired. The centre piece is of course the falls and all the different ways to see it. You can see the falls from pleasure boats from above the falls, you can fly over them in a helicopter or a microlight, walk down to the water’s edge where the water goes over the precipice. The best viewing is from the small park on the down stream side of the falls. The falls are part of the Zambezi river . The river is normally wide and gracefully flowing along. At the point of the falls however is a large deep fault that the water drops down into. From there the fault zigzags back and forth for many km downstream. All of the viewing anywhere is done from the top of the canyon, level with the top of the falls. Hence the downstream view of the falls is level with the top of the falls looking as the water falls down into the canyon. The flow rate is so high though (5 million lpm) that the thunder from the water is quite loud. There is a huge wall of mist rising out of the canyon that can be seen 30 km away. The local name for the falls translated means – the smoke that thunders. The mist rises up about 100 m above the falls then falls back to ground as rain. And rain it is! The little plateau, immediately downstream of the falls, is about 50 m from the water wall and where most of the viewing and pictures of the falls are taken. The falling mist just pelts down like a massive rain storm. No matter what you wear, you are going to get wet. Cameras and phones are going to get destroyed. Most tourists just walk in shorts and no shirt or a skimpy top, knowing they are going to get wet. One enterprising entrepreneur rents out rain jackets, but it is an exercise in futility as you are just going to get drenched. It is all quite fun to experience it. Then stand back 150 m from the falls and it is hot and dry.

On Friday night we took a river boat ride up above the falls on the African Princess, a sister boat to the African Queen. A little more luxurious than the boat used by Audrey Hepburn and Humphrey Bogart! The Zambian side of the river is another park that stretches up river a ways. People can ride elephants in the park. That didn’t appeal to us however too much.
On Saturday morning we took a helicopter ride (Flight of the Angels) over and around the falls which was a great way to see the whole geology of the area and understand why they are like they are. You can see the big hotels that Zimbabwe used to offer but now are hardly used. After that we got taken to the falls park and a guide spent a couple of hours with us showing us along the paths and telling us about the falls and their history. Yep, he too got soaked to the bone. For lunch we went to the Royal Livingstone Hotel. It is on the Zambezi River waterfront right just back from the top of the falls. A magnificent view and beautiful grounds plus a deck over the water for drinking cocktails and watching the sunset on the other side of the Zambezi, with the roar of the falls a 100m away. The wait staff are immaculately dressed, the maitre-d wearing a tux and tails. The reception staff wear the old English pith exploring helmets. Very quaint. The meals are superb and the desserts are a work of art. There are a number of shops around this hotel and another nearby that sell high end souvenirs and house decorations with an African flavour. After lunch we went back to the park at the falls for some more watching. There is a bridge over the canyon just down from the falls. The east end is Zimbabwe and the west is Zambia. We walked out on the bridge to watch the bungee jumping and gorge swings off it into the canyon.

On Sunday we went with an operator, Abseil Zambia, to one of the canyons about 3 km downstream. They had set up a series of adrenaline activities like flying foxes, gorge swings, abseiling down the cliffs there. We signed up for a couple of goes on each of the activities. The abseiling was the most moderate. It was Ramona’s first time to do this but she did well. It was 2 min to go down and then 30 mins to walk back out of the canyon. Next was the flying fox. They strapped you into a harness attached to the middle of your back. At the top the strap was attached to a pulley. The pulley then runs on a cable stretched across the canyon. When swinging you are suspended like you are flying through the air. This had a 5 m long run to the cliff edge and then you leapt off into space. While running the strap is not tight so when you get to the edge and jump off you fall for about ½ m and during that time your heart is in your mouth. Dang! Once the strap comes tight and you realise it is not going to break and plummet you to the rocks below, you find yourself hanging horizontally and flying along the cable out over the canyon. It is quite cool. On the last time I took the video camera with me to capture the flying over the precipice out into the canyon.
Next came the Gorge Swing. After having seen it earlier that morning I was quite dreading it. This is no ordinary swing! Like the flying fox it is based on a main wire stretched over the canyon. Another cable is attached at one end to a pulley rolling on the main wire. The other end of this swing cable is attached to you via a harness. The scary thing is that the swing cable does not get tight until you have fallen down into the canyon 53m. Only then does it come tight and act like a swing and you swing back and forth over the canyon. So you start off on standing on this concrete platform sticking out over the gorge. Then you jump off and literally free fall these 53m which takes about 3.5 seconds. Then the swing cable snaps tight and you swing out into the canyon. Wow, does that 3.5 secs scare the heck out of you. You see the cliff face just rushing past you so fast and your mind tells you it is all over. It was just scary how fast you are falling before the cable comes tight and takes the weight. Ramona and I did it twice as a tandem strapped to each other at the hip. Me being heavier would fall faster and Ramona would get pulled over on top of me just as the swing cable came tight. Then once the cable was tight it was a nice swing back and forth over the canyon for a few minutes till they lowered us down to the valley floor. One of the assistants took our video camera and videoed us during the event. Not a movie to be shown in public. That is some scary activity, boy!

Monday had us flying back to Lusaka, the Zambian capital where we had a few hours to wait until our flight back to TZ. The taxi driver we had met on Friday was there to pick us up and take us to a shopping mall. We caught a good ol USA movie full of car chases and shoot outs, “Armored.” The taxi driver then took us back to the airport for a midnight flight back to Nairobi then Arusha.

Another Water Well Drilling Project, Babati

2010-04-07T06:19:00.000-07:00

Another project is underway at an area called Babati. It started about 2 years ago and is a bit behind schedule and needs help. Babati is about a 4 hour drive west of Arusha. 2/3rds of the way is tarmac as that is the way to the game watching parks. After that, the last 60 km is on gravel road and that part takes a long time. Average speed of 25 km per hour on a lot of it. Thankfully there are some contractors from China who are in the process of getting the road ready to seal. It may be next year before it is done and should then be a boom to the Babati economy as it will then be a lot more accessible to Arusha and the tourist industry. Babati is close to the rift valley's huge escarpment so some of the scenery is quite picturesque. At the moment there is very little in the way of any facilities to attract tourists to the region. The roads are poor. It gets a lot of rain in the wet season and agriculture is full swing out there. Part of the project is to install a number of new water wells and rehabilitate older water points that no longer work. We have come out here to help with getting 20 new wells drilled. We spent part of January and February writing and sending out bid documents for water well location surveying and their drilling, then reviewing the offers. In mid March we drove out here in the Adra Land Cruiser and our little Pajero. The roads out here are way too rough for the Pajero and the Land Cruiser is the ideal vehicle to use for day to day work. Babati is a small town at a T intersection of 3 roads. The road to the east is to Arusha, to the west is the road to Dadoma and to the North is the road to Singida. The arms of the T are tarmac sealed for about 1 km in each of the three directions then it is rough gravel/dirt road. The town has the normal collection of guest houses, hardware stores, salons, a couple of banks, some bars, stationery stores and petrol stations. No western restaurants at all. We are staying at a small 9 room guest house called the White Rose and given where we are, it is quite nice. Some days it reminds us of Fawlty Towers with the one guy who runs everything, Michael, getting called in all different directions at once. The only other place to eat in town for Mzungus is Pik-n-Pay where a bowl of rice and beans is $2 and coke is 40 cents. You can only eat so many bowls of rice and beans over a couple of weeks, before your appetite starts to fade away.
The first weekend we got there, there was no work to do so we went for a hike up onto a hill behind the town. All dirt roads and crossing through peoples yards to get to the hill. It provided a nice overlook of the town and the lake on the nw end of the town.
The drilling contractor Chuck we are using is from Oregon and has many years of drilling experience. He was with us in Gairo last year too. Chuck is an easy going retiree. Chuck already had his survey crew here by the time we arrived in Babati and the drilling crew arrived a couple of days later. The survey equipment was new to us. It measures electrical resistivity in the ground along a 600 m long line with electrodes spaced every 10 m apart. The signal can penetrate down to approx 100 m in depth. It shows the results on a coloured contour 2D plot. Low resistivity being clays, medium resistivity being sands and gravels (where the water would be located if it was there at all) and bed rock is high resistivity. It takes about a day to do one survey by the time we drive there on these roads, do the survey and get back, so it can be a slow process. Babati is a hilly region so it is unlikely that there will not be a place to drill somewhere along the 600 m line. However in many cases we struggle to find a place 600 m long to lay out the cables. The little valleys may not be that wide and at this time of year, any flat land is covered by 5 ft high maize plants. While the maize is ok to survey in, we cannot get the drill rig in there as the ground is too soft and the truck would get stuck. It is currently the rainy season where it rains on and off almost every day so any tilled ground is very soft. We could have waited till the end of the rainy season to drill but the project is rapidly running out of time as it is and delaying another couple of months would have been a bigger problem. The local government policy is to locate water wells 100 m away from any building or road, which is proving quite difficult to do in this terrain. We keep questioning what constitutes a road in this country? Is a dirt path in a maize field a road? No one can answer of course. To us putting a well somewhat close to a road makes more sense as it is then accessible to the well users, rather than make them carry their buckets across the country side. We had the same consensus in Gairo last year so not sure why it is different here. Also here there are more politics of a lot of other parties wanting to be involved and have their say which makes it slow to work out here.
Due to the number of officials watching us on site, we are being extra careful to document the progress and well performance. A hand pump can only pump about 500 liters per hour. We are endeavouring to drill to depths where we can get at least 2000 liters per hour. This may not be possible for all locations and so we spend quite a amount of time measuring the flow rate of water coming from the well over a few hours to verify it is suitable for a hand pump. To measure the flow rate, we use the rig compressor to air lift all the water from out of the hole. Once out of the hole the water falls on the ground and runs off to the low point. By making small earth works from the drill cuttings, we control where the water runs off to and can direct it to flow through a V-notch weir we made in town one day or if the ground is soft enough to dig a big enough hole in to hold a 20 l bucket down in it, then we flow the water through a 150 mm diameter PVC pipe and measure how long it takes to flow 20 liters of water into a 20 liter bucket held under the pipe outlet. From that we compute the flow per hour.
After 2 weeks we had only drilled 4 bores and had broken two down hole hammers and gotten stuck many times. Getting parts for the hammers proved tricky and they have to be ordered from India so this has bought the drilling to a halt for at least two weeks. That coupled with the problems the rain was causing of getting these heavy trucks stuck every time we got off a road means we are on hold for at least two weeks so we have come back to Arusha. The little town of Babati is on a slight downhill W-E slope. At the top of the town just north is a lake covering a couple of 100 acres. With all the rain, the level has risen to where the normal overflow outlet cannot handle the flow so the lake is spilling its water over the edge and into the main street of the town. On either side of the main street are 1 m deep and 1 m wide open drains to channel water off. The one on the lake side runs at full flow the whole time we have been there. The one on the other side of the street is blocked in a culvert and no one bothers to clean it out, so it is empty and can’t help with any run off. If more water flows from the lake than the first drain can handle, then the water flows across the main street in many places and at quite a few cm deep. It makes it hard for the locals who have to walk everywhere to walk around through this water and all the mud it creates along the side of the street and into any of the shops. About ½ of the area for the bus station is underwater that people have to walk through. The kids love these drains flowing with all the water. They take a mosquito net (probably from some well wishing donor) and since the nets are a nice conical shape it makes an ideal net to hold the opening across the width of the drain and catch fish in that have been caught up in the lake overflow. Some of them spend all day in the drain fishing, even on school days. Go figure!

Loss of a Sister, Elinor

2010-04-07T06:11:00.000-07:00

During February we made an unscheduled return trip to Louisiana to visit with Ramona’s terminally ill sister Elinor as her condition was deteriorating. We spent two weeks there visiting with her and helping their mother out with caring for Elinor. Sadly just after we returned to Tanzania, Elinor passed away, we are comforted to know she is no longer in pain. This was very hard on us even though all the family knew it was coming. Not being able to go to the funeral was disappointing for us; however, we shared in Elinor’s memorial service from here. Another memorial service for Elinor will also be held in Austin Texas, where the three of us lived for many years, and made many friends. It will be held in September this year, and we will be attending. Elinor will always be greatly missed by Ross, Ramona and her family. She’ll continue to live in our hearts.

Pangani - A New Year's Beach Getaway

2010-01-12T00:23:00.000-08:00

5 of us volunteers from Adra climbed into our little Pajero and headed east to the Indian ocean for a few days over New Years eve. It is meant to be a 6 hour drive, but the drive between Arusha and Moshi which is a smaller town 60 km due east took about 2 hours. There were police out in front of every little village stopping virtually every one. There are many villages between Arusha and Moshi. This is their high season and they can supplement their salaries with a lot by stopping and finding things wrong with people’s vehicles then taking unreceipted fines!. We got stopped for not having a copy of the vehicle registration on us. Then we got stopped for not having a ‘fire sticker’. Not having heard of this we ask what is a fire sticker. He points us to a guy sitting in a fire truck donated by the Japanese. Apparently every vehicle is meant to pass a ‘fire certification’ then gets a sticker to put on the windshield. Naturally they don’t have any stickers left but we still have to pay, then with his written temporary receipt, then drive into the government office in Moshi to get an official government receipt to say we had paid for this inspection. No one ever inspected the truck. The government guy in Moshi had no stickers either, he said try again late January. While in Moshi we filled up with fuel and when I opened the petrol cap a wasp flew out and stung my hand. Ouch, it swelled up a bit for three days. That was a lot of drama in 2 hours!
Anyway we get to Pangani with no further incident at about 3 pm after the last 42 km along a dirt road. We checked into the Tinga-Tinga lodge. It is quite basic and rustic on a cliff top overlooking the blue ocean. Very pretty. It is a lot hotter there than Arusha so we quickly head down the steps to the ocean. The water is very warm and fantastic for swimming and just floating about it. Very nice. Dinner is in an open air restaurant with seafood dishes. The full moon is shining on the water in between the palm trees. The next day was New Years eve. We drove to Pangani town itself and walked along the dilapidated water front. It used to be a popular trading center in the early days but has been neglected for about 100 years and so most of the early European style stone buildings are in various stages of decay and collapse. They still have some nostalgic charm. The town got its infamous name from the Swahili verb ‘panga’ which is to arrange. It was a slave trading town and the selling broker would call out ‘Panga Panga’ to get the slaves arranged in a line to be sold. Over the years it became Pangani. New Years eve was with about 30 guests at the lodge, all international travellers of some sort. The lodge put on a special buffet. After eating we moved just outside on to the grass on the cliff top where it was a little cooler. The evening passed quickly with talking to other people, where they came from, why they were in Tanzania. At midnight, out came the champagne for a New Years toast.
New Years day after a morning swim, the lodge manager said he would take us for a walk up the beach to a special beach where there were giant Clam fossils in the sandy cliffs. We were into this with excitement. Taking our swimming gear and water bottle we headed off north around the next bay. Tucked in behind some mangroves was this sandy beach with a 7 m sandy cliff above it. Sure enough there were many of these fossils. Millions of years old they had been calcified and were very heavy. Some almost complete shells and some broken ones. Some protruding just a little suggestively bit from the sand ,others lying exposed on the sand. With storms and high tides they get reburied and others get exposed all the time he said. These shells are about 2 ft (0.6 m) across. Ramona had her picture taken sitting in one. On the way back instead of walking back around the bay I swam across it while Ramona carried our gear. The water is so warm and inviting. The next day after a morning swim we left with fond memories of this secluded beach town.

Serengeti Park is Amazing

2010-01-11T23:51:00.000-08:00

Serengeti is Maasai for Endless Plains. Tucked in behind the Ngorogoro group of extinct volcanoes, the Ngorogoro Conservation Area abuts against the eastern side of the Serengeti. From there and to a long way west are these vast grassy plains that seem to stretch forever. The difference between the Conservation area and the Serengeti is striking. In the Conservation area the Maasai shepherds are allowed to graze their herds of cows and goats. There the pastures are very short and bare in places. In the Serengeti no domestic grazing is allowed. The grassy plains are thick rich grass. The official entrance is about 20 km inside the park set in a big rock Kopje. Once past that, you drop down to the plains proper and the incredibility of 100,000’s of animals becomes very apparent. Zebras and Wildebeests grazing as far as the eye can see. From the very close that move off the gravel road as the vehicle travels by to just black specs on the far horizon. It is simply staggering to see that much wildlife before your eyes. We’d barely gone 1 km down the road towards the park center and came across a small pride of lions lying out open on the grass. They have few predators if any and so can virtually do what they like when they like. With this much food around for them they do not have to go very far. They barely blinked as we stopped to film them. We camped the first night (Christmas eve)at a public campground near the center of the park. Here there are quite a few trees and bushy with rocky out crops. The guide and cook that came with us from SOK Adventure Travel we had arranged the trip with, looked after putting up the tent and preparing food. We ate in style, huge plate of food with a bottle of wine, though it was shared with a number of large moths who liked our lanterns in the dark. It was a 5:15am start Christmas day as we were going to hot air ballooning at dawn. A driver came to pick us up in the dark (and rain now). The roads that were not gravel had turned into this black super sticky mud and our Landcruiser got stuck. We had to wait for another to come and tow us out. Once at the balloon launch site we waited for the rain to go off, but alas it never did so the balloon was cancelled for that day. They were fully booked for the next days so we thought we had lost the opportunity. Back to the camp ground and the rain stopped. Another huge plate of food and then off for a game spotting drive around the center of the park. There are roads crisscrossing about every ½-1 km so you can get close to most locations. Throughout the grassy plains are small streams with long grass and trees growing along them. This is where the predators seem to spend their time in waiting for the grazing animals to wander close. We spotted another pride of lions not far from our camp. They had killed a zebra the day before and were now standing (actually lying sprawled out)guard over it to keep the vultures from stealing their next two days food. A couple of km further on we saw a group of parked Landcruisers bumper to bumper with tourists leaning out the top, their camera’s with super lens on them pointing in the same direction to some trees. Pulling up in the cluster we spot a cheetah slinking through the long grass. Out come our cameras too. After a while of the traffic jam of too many Landcruisers around we moved further south to a region with less traffic. Another Cheetah was spotted close to our road. She was walking along parallel to the road. Taking her time and stopping every now and then to look around over her shoulder. What a magnificent cat. Unlike the solid muscled lions, the cheetah is almost a cross with a gray hound dog. They are long and sleek, with a large chest and a very small rear with a long thick tail. Purely built for speed. We watched and followed her for quite a while. For a while two jackles (like a fox) came along and joined her. They would follow her about 5 m behind. She didn’t seem to mind too much bet every few mins she would turn around and appear to tell them to get lost. They would run off about 50 m, then when she resumed her course they would come back to behind her again like little kittens. So cute. Leaving the Cheetah and off to some more rock kopjes with trees on to see if there are more cats in them. They use these big rocks as look out points over the plains. Seeing nothing there we moved east over to area where these was a small stream running along. There were quite a few trees with long grass along the depression. There were two other Landcruisers there watching something. We finally saw their target, a Leopard sneaking through the grass making a path along the stream depression. We drove further along crossed over the stream and came back on the other side where the leopard now was. We were about 50 m away from her. She crept along a distance more, then found a tree with a big broken branch sticking out of it a couple of meters above the ground. She leapt up on this near horizontal branch and sat surveying the area. She was paying no attention to any of us at all. The leopard is spotted like a cheetah but has the frame of a small female lion. This was our first leopard we had seen. Beautiful creature and a mighty hunter we are told.
Back to the camp, past the lions guarding their dead zebra, and yet another huge plate of food for a late lunch. We told Amani the cook to cook on smaller plates, he just laughed and trotted off to bring a plate of fruit for dessert. The rain had come back as a drizzle as we started off on a Christmas evening game drive. Past the lions again now with more vultures around sitting in the trees getting soaked with rain. We pass a heard of Cape Buffalo in some trees. These are one of the big five. A massive bull like animal with a dangerous set of curved horns ready to tear into you if they can get you. They are very aggressive we hear and always look at you with an angry appearance. They are impressive to see nevertheless. By now it is getting dark. Our guide and driver Emanuel gets a call from his brother who also is in the park. He is a guide for another group. His Landcruiser has broken down not far from us. We drive over and tow him back to the lodge where his clients are staying then return to our camp in the dark. Amani delivers another huge plate of food with a bottle of red this time. Emanuel with some prompting gives a good lesson in Kiswahili.
5:50 am and our alarm goes off on Boxing day. Emanuel wants us in the Landcruiser by 6 am for an early morning game drive. Back past the lions still hording their food supply from hungry eyes. We drive north stopping for a troop of baboons on the road doing their early morning grooming. Their hand actions are so human like it is fascinating to watch. Then it is on to the Hippo pool. With the recent rain the river was in flood. The hippo pool is at a right angle bend in the river, the water is quite deep and swift with a stillish area at the back of the bend. There are dozens of hippos in there. Snorting and fighting with each other. Quite a racket at times. The size of these massive animals is quite apparent at that close range. Back to the campsite, for yes you guessed it, another huge breakfast. Onto an afternoon game drive, this time down in the south of the park. On the way we got to see several groups of lion sitting in trees and watching what was going on out on the grassy plains. Though not unheard of, lions are not normally in trees. They are a bit awkward crawling around the trees. One tree had two near full grown males in it. Their heads with the mane are so big. Another had two big lioness and two ½ grown cubs all in it. We passed a small water hole with hyenas sitting in the water to cool off. They just peered at us as we pulled up to watch. Quite odd. Further south was away from the grassy plains with significantly less animals we learned after a while. We came across a group of people sitting on top of the Landcruiser drinking wine pointing at a lioness a couple of 100 m away sitting on a rock kopje eyeing them. Their Landcruiser was stuck in a 7 m wide river crossing with steep muddy banks on each side. The water was up to the bottom of the doors. They had been there 3 hours without seeing any one in sight so were glad to see us. Without a long tow rope we could not pull them out and they didn’t appear to want to get dirty to dig themselves out. We tried a piece of short rope our driver had, that only ended up getting us stuck in their too. Not good, late afternoon, no one knows where we are, two stuck Landcruisers and a lion watching it all. We had prepayed several $100 to stay in a game lodge that night and the thought of losing that luxury and having to stay in a Landcruiser in the middle of a muddy water pool was not appealing. With cutting branches with a very blunt machete and digging away the banks we got our Landcruiser out finally. We took their driver with us and dropped him off with a ranger to go back and tow them out properly. We got back to the lodge after dark and in the rain. On the way the Balloon people called our driver and said they had 2 free spots for the next morning and we could go.Another 5:30 am rise to get to the balloon site. It was overcast, no rain and with a gentle breeze to the south. Just before the balloon was ready, the basket was on its side and we were instructed to enter the basket and sit in our seats that were now on their side. Once every one was in their seat, the pilot ignited the burners and filled the balloon with hot air, the balloon picked itself up vertical and the basket rolled the right way up and we were off. The other balloons were a few minutes behind us. We would float anywhere from 10 to 300 m above the ground. There were herds of wildebeest and zebra below us with the occasional hyena skulking across the plain. The balloon burners make a bit of noise when they are on and the wildebeest being very nervous will run off quite readily. The flight was meant to be for an hour but the wind carried us south where there were fewer roads for the support vehicles to meet us, so we stayed aloft as long as we could to get closer to a road, by the time we hit the ground the butane tanks were completely empty and the balloon could travel no more. A great experience with breathtaking views. After that they took us to a nearby set of trees where they had laid out a champagne breakfast for us all. After breakfast it was back to Arusha.

Oldavai Gorge Stop Over
This is in the Ngorogoro Conservation area. This is the site where Mary and Louis Leakey made their famous early man discoveries back in the 1950s. There is a small museum with fossil and stone tool relics. You have lunch on top of the cliff under a shaded roof overlooking the gorge that drops off right below and stretches out for a km of so. A guide gives a lecture on the history of the site while you eat lunch. Their bones were 1.6 million years old. A few km away Mary discovered some human foot prints over a 25 m stretch from two adults and a child (they called 'Lucy'). These prints were 3.6 m years old, but no fossils at that site. At the Oldavai site there are excavations every year by international scholars and finds are common we were told. It may have been an old lake which is why there is so much evidence of previous habitation there.

The Passing of Boots

2009-12-13T00:31:00.000-08:00

This last week we got a call from our house sitters in Melbourne that our dear little cat Boots had had a stroke and couldn’t walk. The vet said there was nothing they could do for him and so we had to let him go. He was 13. We are feeling so sad. Ever since we have been married we have virtually had our cats Kimba and Boots. He was such a great little friend. He would follow us around the house or yard just to be with us and talk with us. He had a great sense of humour and loved to play. Every day when we used to come home from work in Melbourne the cats would meet us with great affection. They could brighten any day. Boots would sprawl out on the bed every night forcing us into uncomfortable contorted positions to make room for him, but we never complained, it was so nice to have him there like that. We were truly blessed to share his life and he will be missed greatly. He was our little boy.

Lake Eyasi – A Cultural Visit

2009-12-12T23:12:00.000-08:00

This last weekend we went on another camping trip with almost the same people we went to Lake Natron with. Alan and Andrea are due to leave Tanzania after 3 years here, so it was our last adventure with them. They go back to Aust & New Zealand. We had become good friends with them so it is sad to see them go. On this trip we did not take our little Pajero and instead rode in the Landrover of Alan and Andrea. They had said the road would be rougher than the Lake Natron road which was quite bad in places. No tarseal of course. This Lake is out west in the same direction as Natron sort of, but further west. We left Friday night after work and drove to a town called Karatu about 2 hours out of Arusha. That is the end of the sealed road. We spent the night in quite a modern camp ground. We walked to the Happy Days restaurant next door and had burgers and cold drinks out on a wooden deck. Back at the camp ground we went into the lodge bar where they were playing Country and Western music. We gave Andrea some Two-Stepping lessons.
The next morning it was west off the tarseal towards Lake Eyasi. Another 2 hr drive along well defined but crude dirt track. At often times the local kids would see the trucks coming and run to the edge of the track and call out for candy or pens (of all things). The camp round was a nice long grassy grove amongst some Acacia and other tall trees with black seed pods about the size of a tennis ball. It was on the side of the lake bed but like Natron, the lake was well down and it was about 2 km out to the water’s edge over a lifeless and very hot mud flat. It is an alkaline lake so there is very little life around there. No fish in the lake at all, hence no feeding birds either naturally. We never actually saw the water. Back at the tent sites, Alan pointed out the seed pods made good Platunc balls. We spent several hours playing a game of that. During which Bruce discovered he had a puncture in his van tyre. Bruce wanted to fix the puncture there as there are little facilities in the local Eyasi village. It took a while to get the tyre off the rim and it was hot. Warm cokes (no cold drinks available) were going down a plenty. The camp ground has a reasonable shower and toilets (holes in the ground surrounded by a bunch of sticks tied together). So a shower afterwards was welcome. Just before dusk we went up to a cliff top that gave impressive over views of the sunset over the lake and surrounding area. The sunset was a classic picturesque African rich deep orange sunset. Magnificent. We even were fortunate to see a striped Hyena slinking through the bush below. Alan had seen it on his last trip to Eyasi a year ago too he said.
The reason we went to Eyasi is that there are some isolated tribal people who live there in their old tribal ways. They are ‘off the grid’ so to say and pretty much keep to their old ways and not intermingle with the regular people. This is a very dry arid area making quite a primitive lifestyle. Too tough for us. Two tribes we wanted to see were the Hadzabe and Datoga. So on Sunday morning the local guide we had hired the day before showed up with three Hadzabe men. They were to show us where to find a Hadzabe village. The Hadzabe are hunters, not farmers. So they are always on the move after animals to hunt. They have no electricity in their villages, no water supply, no schools, no permanent houses, only basic structures made from sticks that looks like a stick igloo. If they kill a big animal like a Water Buffalo and the carcass is too heavy to bring back to the village, they just move the village to the carcass.
These three Hadzabe wanted us to take them to a special big rock where a particular plant grew. The plant they used to extract a poison from to put on the tips of their arrows. They would boil down some of the branches of this plant to make this poison for their arrows. Apparently this poison could drop a buffalo in about 30 mins. Powerful stuff. They normally took three days to walk to this rock so being driven in a landrover was a treat for them. One of them had a stiff leg whose knee no longer worked. A few years ago he had gotten into a tussle with a water buffalo they had shot with a poisoned arrow and thought was dead. However when they approached it, it turned out to be a different buffalo and was angry about being woken up so took to this guy galling his leg badly. The three Hadzabe with us were not used to vehicles so wanted to ride on the roof rack on top instead of getting inside the vehicle. Made for a good picture. We drove to this rock along the eastern side of the lake not along any road we could see. However when we got there a few Tanzanian locals came out at the sight of 6 mzungus and wanted to charge us a visiting fee. Even though we were just there to allow the Hadzabe to collect their plant clippings, they still said the mungus had to pay first. So we left, we are not into paying bribes. We drive a few more miles to the village cultural center where we could pay an official entrance fee for their area. These fees then should go to the village development rather than to someone’s pocket. But the office was unmanned and no one could find anyone to come and open it. So we left there too.
On to a Hadzabe village. It was a small village of only about 20 people, 4-5 families. ½ dozen young kids and some teenagers with parents. Dressed in loose skins. They let us shoot their bows for a while. They could hit a 6” target at about 25 m no problem at all. After 3 goes I actually hit the target. However I could only pull the bows back about ½ what they did and they were all shorter than me. So my arrow would have had no penetrating power. Some of the people with us bought a bow and a set of arrows as souvenirs.
After that we went to a Datoga village. These people are quite different. More sophisticated than the Hadzabe. They wear nicely tailored clothes from skins. Their houses are permanent mud brick houses. They perform a small amount of industry with the smeltering of metals to make arrow heads, that they sell to the Hadzabe, or make bracelets or other jewellery that the women then sell to tourists like us we presume. They had a crude set of bellows made to make their fires hot enough to melt brass (old padlocks) and bronze or soften steel. They managed to sell a few arrow heads and bracelets to our group. They grew some crops and showed Ramona and Andrea how to grind the maize into a powder. Very nice and friendly people.
The next day as we were packing up to return to Arusha, a couple who had been in the camp ground too, came and asked us for a ride back to town if we had room. They were on their honeymoon travelling around Northern Tanzania. He was Scottish and she was German. An interesting couple. Patrick worked for the Red Cross and had just finished 5 years in Afghanistan. He had some good tales to tell. We met up with them two nights later to go to dinner in Arusha to hear more of their work and travels. Their next assignment was in Chad. A different career path to most people.

Lake Natron; A Place of Wonders

2009-09-27T04:20:00.000-07:00

This last weekend we went on a 4 day camping trip with other VSA volunteers, a German girl and a Danish guy. 9 of us all up. 3 people had been to this place before which was just as well as it is not obvious at all. The place is called Lake Natron in the NW of Tanzania. Not far from Ngorogoro Crater which is the big famous national park. To get to Natron however is 100 km (60 m) off the tarmac road. It took 5 hours to drive that distance. Corrugated gravel road that shakes you to bits, that then turns into a gravel dirt road, then a dirt road dropping down through dry river beds, or crossing high planes. Fun driving but our poor little truck gets a rough time on these roads. It managed them really well overall. There were 3 other vehicles as well so we travelled in sort of a convoy. Bruce has a 4WD high ace van he has fitted out for Africa and so includes a large tool box just as well. About ¼ of the way in the rubber bushing on the top of his front right shock disintegrated allowing the shock to bang around. He dives into his tool box comes out with a set of tools and an old piece of car tyre and makes a new bushing. This lasted about another 1 hour then the metal shims that hold the rubber bushing on became pounded out and they and the rubber came off again. Bruce makes a new rubber and I find a 3/8” washer at the bottom of his box. This is quite a bit thicker than the metal shims so he puts that on and it holds the rest of the weekend just fine.
Then a bit more on Alan and Andrea get a puncture in their Landrover. Now we are hours from anywhere, no chance of getting any repair of the tyre. We put the spare on and Alan says at the end up by the lake there is a tiny village maybe we can get another tube there. So off we go again fingers crossed.

At one point we drive through the crater highlands. This is a high grassy plane, with mountains on both sides, except that now it is so dry that there is only stalks left. But there are these small craters from old volcanoes all over the place. Very cool scenery, hostile to life but beautiful to admire. This is also the heart of Maasai country. The Maasai are cattle and goat herders. They wander around the planes and mountains with their herds looking for food for them. They live in Boma’s which is like a collection of ½ dozen igloos made of mud. In this area there is extremely little water. The Maasai have learned to live without much water, they drink things like animal blood. As we drove along the road, some that were close to the road and seeing 4 vehicles drive along, would come running down to the road begging for any water. Money was not important to them like it is in Arusha or more normal places. They just wanted water. Quite a shock to the mind to see and learn this. The Maasai dress in the most beautiful colours. The men are wrapped in a tartan like red/black cloth and they all carry a spear or stick. The women are similar but wear all this ornate jewellery. Large earrings, multiple in each ear, intricate neck pieces. Very stunning to look at them. They have their own language too so we could not understand anything they said only when they indicted drinking something.
Also at this Lake Natron is Ol Doinyo Lengai Volcano. This is Maasai for Mountain of God. As we drove north we saw the mountain come into view. It is a very symmetric steep mountain all by itself about a mile from any other mountains. We had to drive past it to get to the lake and the camp ground. It is still an active volcano, last erupted in 2006 with a large amount of rocks and ash and sand. (No Lava). You could see from its slopes there were no trees or plants, just rock sheets and rocks and sand gullies that water had flowed down in. It is quite pretty really in an odd way.
We got to camp just at dusk and set up the tents, and found they had a swimming pool albeit a little green and they served cold beer and sodas. We were set.

They next day we spent a lot in the pool as the heat was impressive once out of the shade. Ramona walked off the grassy area that was the campground boundary out on to the edge of the lake bed (when the lake used to be that high, all just sand now) and wow was it hot out there. Back to the pool. There is a little town a km down the road that we were told may have a spare tube for Alan. The camp owner asked us while we were in town if we could bring his supplies back as he had just seen the bus go buy and he didn’t want them to sit around for too long. There would be a guide there too we could talk to he said about climbing the mountain. So off we went. Found a tube at an exorbitant price, but the vendor had us over a barrel. We bought that and went to find the guide and a cold coke in a little wooden shack. This was a Maasai town, about a dozen wooden buildings. The clothing was impressive all over, some women in the bright red with jewellery, some in black from a different tribe with different jewellery. Bruce bought a great Maasai spear for $15. There is no phones here, no TV, no news paper. This was their world and that was all they knew. But very friendly people. They were selling all sorts of trinkets and jewellery very cheap. We arranged for the guide to meet us at 11 pm that night. They days are too hot, especially climbing on black rocks and sand, to climb during the day. So we were to do a night climb.

At about 5 pm we drove around to the lake bottom to a point where we could access the lake to see the Flamingos. The lake is low so there was about ½ mile of dry sandy mud to walk from the car stop point to the water’s edge. It is an alkaline lake too, so nothing grows, quite a stark arid area. Then there are these beautiful pink delicate big Flamingos by the 1000. Everywhere. A group here another over there etc. The horizon on the lake was just a pink band. Some were landing, some were taking off, others feeding or talking. The contrast of the aridness to the colourful birds was just so impressive.

We tied to get an hours sleep after dinner that night but not too successful. Got up at 11 and drove to the camp gate where the guide or actually the guide’s substitute was waiting for us. He said in broken English he was the guide’s brother and his brother was sick. Not good, the original guide was very experienced and spoke quite good English. Alan was saying this was a set up, to take our money and not do the climb. We talked with him some more and noted he had bought some climbing sticks with him for us to use which we took as a good sign, so we decided to take the risk. It was about 30 mins drive to the base of the mtn. Along the way we chatted some more to him in broken English and got to feel better about the situation as he seemed to know what he was talking about. He had bought a 2nd guy to stand security on the Landrover while we were climbing. We started climbing at midnight. It was a starry night, clear with a cool breeze blowing which made it a great night for a climb. We were walking on sandy trails or sandy rivulets in between sheets of rock from previous eruptions. The higher we got the more steep it became. The sand made climbing tiresome slipping backwards all the time. At 3:30 Ramona and Alan said they would stop there as it was getting more and more difficult to make progress. They nestled down behind a big rock out of the wind and waited for us to return. The guide made sure they understood to not move away from this area. He said it was too dangerous to attempt to walk down in the dark; we had to descend in daylight. Alan is quite an experienced climber which made me feel better about them stopping there by themselves. That left myself, Yong and the guide to go further on. At about 4:30 the going was steeper still and the sand and rough rock plates were making harder and harder to get a footing on. Yong said he was so tired that he just wanted to go to sleep, so he said he would stop there. It was still another 2.5 hours to the top the guide said. Poor Yong however was on a steep part and could find no flat space too lie down, so he sat down and propped himself up with his walking stick so he wouldn’t fall over when he fell asleep.
There were two other groups on the mtn too. They had started after us and had passed us earlier on so we could see their lights up the mtn. The guide and I carried on, we passed one group, then the second group as they had stopped for a rest. Once they started again they soon passed us. A fit Canadian couple with a guide. As we neared what looked to be the top rim there was a little bit of damp soil like stuff around and it made climbing on the rocks slippery. It was steep enough now that often I was climbing on all 4s to grab rocks and lift my feet up trying not to slip. Still a lot of soft sand in the gullies between the rock plates. By now I was rather tired. The sun had just come up so the head lamps could be turned off. Approaching the rim I could now see these two great rock structures like a gate way with a gap between them. We were heading for the gap. That must be the top I thought. However as we got within a 100 meters, I could see there was yet another ½ mile (1 km) more of rock and sand to go up beyond this gap. My heart sank; the 7 hours of exertion were taking their toll. That would take at least another hour or more. The guide was 10 m in front and once through the gap he turned left and disappeared from sight. I got to the gap a few minutes later and turned left too, to find a gentle ridge going up about 70 meters to where it turned to the right into the top ridge around the crater and that was quite flat. My joy soared we didn’t have to climb that ½ mile of sloping rock after all. It was now very easy walking on the rim. I could finally get the camera out and take some pictures. The top was a series of depressions and the main crater with a thin rim between them all. One side of the rim would fall down the mtn, the other side of the rim would fall into the crater or one of these other depressions. The rim was about 4 ft wide so it was quite safe and easy to walk along. The crater was about 1 km wide. On the inside the rim sloped steeply down for about 100 m then a sudden 100 m deep drop off down to the bottom of the crater. You could see steam, smell a bit of sulphur, and see rock that had cooled from lava extrusions. Pretty cool stuff.
The outside of the rim fell away steeply on all sides. With the sun just up and low on the horizon, the whole mtn cast a perfect symmetric shadow on the big escarpment cliff about a mile away. That made for a nice picture.
Then came the going down, not something I was looking forwards to. The Canadians had left to go down about 15 mins before us. The third group was still coming up. The rock plates were too slippery to walk on top of let alone try to step down on them, so it meant walking in the sand gullies between the rock plates. These gullies or rivulets were from 1 – 4 ft deep and 1- 4 ft wide. The sand was not slippery like the rocks but you could easily slide down with all the sand around your boot sliding down to. So the process was to take the walking stick, stick it in the sand or a crevice about 2 ft in front, then step down to the stick with one foot, if that held, then step down with the other foot while hanging on to a rock edge on the edge of the rock plate with the remaining hand. Then repeat over again. A slow but steady process. I knocked a few rocks loose and we had to yell out to the Canadians about 100 yds in front of us below to ‘Look Out’ as that can be very dangerous. Once going, those rolling & bouncing rocks do not stop for ages. The further down the less step it got and easier to walk.
It took about 4 hours to go down, picking up Yong then Ramona and Alan along the way. By then it was near 11 am and the heat was in full force. Needless to say the afternoon was spent in the pool in the shade with cold cokes and beers.
It took 4-1/2 hrs to drive out again the next day, passing Zebra, Ostrich, Jackals’, etc. This time we had filled up all our empty water bottles and handed them out to the Maasai people who came up to the road as we drove along. Some were so excited to get water.

About ½ way out, there was an ancient stone ruins site off the way so we went to that for a short diversion. About 500 yrs old, it was occupied by some people pre Maasai. People called Songo they thought, whose relatives now live way up north of Lake Natron. Not a lot of details known as there was no written language amongst those people pre-European.

Lions in Ruaha National Park

2009-09-27T03:43:00.000-07:00

After installing the last pump, we took a couple of days off to go further south to Iringa and to visit another big game park called Ruaha. The drive is through the Mikumi national park to Iringa and is on tarmac. Iringa town itself is off the main road about 2 km up on top of a cliff. The main street runs along parallel to the cliff top. We chatted to a guiding company about whether to use them to get to the park or whether to drive there our selves in our Pajero. We had heard the road was not so good from Iringa to the park. After considering the options we choose to book a night at a lodge just outside the park entrance and rent their guide and vehicle from there. That meant us driving the 60 km to the lodge. It was mostly flat but corrugated and rough. It took 3 hours to get there. We got there at dusk. The lodge was way up on the side of a hill with great views of the planes and trees below. At that time of year though, it was very very dry. No greenery to see, most things including trees are covered in dust. No chance of seeing any animals in the trees below as there is nothing for them to eat there.
The Lodge included a fixed evening meal that we shared with a group of Germans who had come too. They had a great wooden log balcony to sit on with a cold drink and look out over the tree covered land below and low mountains in the distant inside the park. I must have eaten something bad in Iringa as my stomach was quite upset and could not face a meal. Ramona was fine thankfully. I later lost what little was in my stomach too.
In the morning I saw the Land Cruiser out front ready to go. They guy was letting it roll down hill to jump start it. Hmm I thought. It was 30 km to the park entrance on the same road as yesterday. The Land Cruiser had a lift up top on it so customers can stand up in it and view game. While driving around though the top is normally down. Most of the rubber seals had worn out and it rattled so loud we really couldn’t talk. Once in the park we stopped at a bridge over a river to watch alligators, some hippos, some baboons leaping over rocks and little water ways, so cute. Not long after the bridge the driver stops and gets out of the vehicle, something had broken. We look under the rear and see the sway bar lying on the ground. Two mounts that are meant to hold it up had come undone, the bolts fallen out and lost. He ties it up with a bit of rubber tubing which looked dubious. On we go for about another 15 mins and the same thing happens. He ties it up again and adds a bit of thin wire this time. Then he drives to the head quarters a couple of miles further up the road and into their maintenance compound. He asks one of the mechanics there if they can fix it. About 1 hour later they have it repaired and we have to push start the vehicle again. So at a little after noon we finally begin our game drive proper. A little irritated by now. But the driver knows his stuff and we soon come across Jackals, umpteen Zebra, Giraffe, Warthogs, Impala, and then Ramona says this looks like a good spot for lions. Sure enough we see a lion under a tree, then another and another. 9 all told sitting there in the shade on a raised river bank overlooking the near dry river and the impala out there. We park about 20 ft ( 7 m) from and just below them in the river bed and watch them for ages. They could care less about us, sleeping and watch the impala was the order of the moment it seemed. Eventually one got up and walked down the bank and started to walk out to the river bed behind us intently staring at an impala. Then another and a 3rd. They were fanned out. A 4th one who had been on our front right got up and started to walk past us to join the others. I had been videoing her but as walked towards us she filled the lens. I was backing off the zoom to keep her in the lens then realised there was no more backing off to do as she was just off to the side of the truck walking past us. Ramona was so excited to see this massive cat just right there walking past us. The lion joined the others now in a spread out pattern that looked like a military plan. They sat there so still and just watched that impala. Magnificent, such patience and stealth.
We drove off to leave them in peace. Stopped for lunch well away from the lions. Some others were there and said they had seen a cheetah not far away. So off we went in search of that. The driver found her quite soon stretched out on the ground under a big Baobab tree in the shade. Compared to the big muscled lions, the cheetah is very thin and wiry, built for speed. A movement under the tree caught our eye and out walked a little cub then another. So cute! They walk up to their mama then start playing with each other for a bit. They are very thin too. The mother spots an impala about 200 m away and gets up slowly and she too stealthily walks towards the impala. Seems like Impala was on the menu that day. The cubs follow off too after their mama. She disappears low in the brown grass and we loose sight of her and the cubs. But what a treat to see nature in action.
We head back as it is getting late. Along the way we come across a group of elephants, then a big group of water buffalo under some trees in the shade. Out of the park and almost back at the lodge we get a puncture. The driver rummages around and comes out with a little bottle jack and wrench. We take the flat type off and can’t put the new one on as the jack won’t lift the axel up high enough. I tell the driver we’ll have to dig down to make a depression in the road to put the tyre in low enough to get in on the studs. We do this and get the wheel on. But the truck engine has stopped and now the truck has one wheel in a hole so we can’t push it out with just the three of us. Fortunately just then a van comes driving by and he pushes the land cruiser to get it started and we get back to the lodge at about 4 pm. We say good bye to the staff there, told them their vehicle needs some good maintenance and jump in our Pajero and start the 3 hr drive back to Iringa, knowing that the last hour will be in darkness. Not recommended. But it all went ok.
The next day we went to the Isimila Stone Age site not far from Iringa. This is the site of some very old discoveries of some of the earliest humans. 2nd to the Olduvai gorge only where the Leakeys found their famous finds in the late 50’s. So quite an important site. Not that you would know by the way it was presented. A small confusing sign on the side of the road, then a windy track through some back yards of mud houses down to an over look site that at least did have some respectable buildings on it. There was no one around so we walked down the part to the bottom of the gorge even though it said not too. Once at the bottom, a guide saw us from the top and came running down to show us around. Basically a very dry sand and stony river bed with some old excavators huts on it. The area had not been excavated since the 50’s too. The guide took us on an excursion over to another nearby canyon that we could not see at all from up top. It had some spectacular rock towers in it about 10 m high, we were able to walk right in down amongst them. Fascinating to see structures like this.
After Isimila we headed back to Mikumi. The hills along the Iringa to Mikumi gorge are quite steep with a river at the bottom most of the way. Being steep they have not been grazed or cultivated hence they are still covered in bush. In addition to the usual wrecked trucks along the road, from punctures, to broken axels, to being tipped over, there were forest fires everywhere, not large ones, but smoke and flames were quite common. Some along the road side as the picture shows. This was a first for us to drive past fires like this. There were no fire men or anyone in attendance at any of these fires. They just burn themselves out eventually we concluded. Tanzania continues to be an adventure. Then it was back to Gairo.

From 4 hours to 5 Minutes

2009-09-23T09:25:00.000-07:00

The day we left Gairo Musa from the VSA office in Arusha came down to see our work and to collect some items VSA had provided for the house we had been staying in. We took him on a tour of 15 wells. Musa was able to talk to the local villagers very well. One woman came up to talk to him as she could not talk to us with our limited Swahili. She was telling him how thankful they were to get this water. This particular village had no other water source and they had to walk many kms or 4 or so hours sometimes to get 20 liters of water. Now they have water a 5 min walk from their house. It is not an unlimited amount of water and they have to pump somewhat hard to lift water from that depth, but at least it is some water for them. That is what we came for.

Pumps are Installed

2009-09-23T07:55:00.000-07:00

In Mid August Ramona and I drove our truck back down to Gairo to finish the installation work for the 17 pumps. We spent 2 nights in Dar es Salam where we picked up some of the Tanira manufactured pump parts we would need in Gairo, caught up with some friends and bought 3 weeks’ worth of groceries from one of the big new grocery stores in Dar. There is not too much available in Gairo for Mzungus.
After leavingDar we headed to Morogoro to pick up the remainder of the SWN pump parts we also needed, and then arrived at Gairo 2 hours later.
We had bought down to the Gairo office the laptop computer that had been back at Adra for a couple of weeks while we reset the settings back up for it operate correctly. The first day in Gairo we spent in the office instructing the staff how to use the computer, how to connect to the internet, send emails and check emails, put attachments on emails, sending pictures, and how to open and close the usual Office documents.
Over the next two weeks we installed all the pumps, generally 2-3 per day depending on how deep the pump inlet was set at. Due to Ross’ should injury and not able to lift anything heavy, the Project manager had arranged for a 2nd fundi to help us out with the installations. Nick was the one we had planned to us, but now we had Nick and Jonas. They were great to work with, learned fast, and were keen to work longer hours as required. It worked out best having Jonas there as well as now there are two people in Gairo who know in detail how to install these pumps, how to remove and repair them. The pumps are spread over 6 small villages around Gairo town. Nick and Jonas got to know the Village officers well while we were doing the installations so they have a good relationship set up now for the villagers to contact Nick if the pumps breakdown and need a service. So we think we have set up a very sustainable water supply. A typical installation would involve Nick Supervising, and doing the critical rod assemblies, Jonas doing the backup preparation and then up to 8 or so village males of various ages helping with the lifting of the rods to lower down the well, then about 20 or more other people watching and offering unendless suggestions. Often during the installations the people would be chatting back and forth with Nick and Jonas making jokes, some about us we gather, or singing a song (because they were happy they said at that time). This part of the project was the most rewarding. A very satisfying feeling that we were giving something to these people who basically have nothing and that the benefits to them were so obvious and to see how happy they were was truly a moving experience.
When we finished installing a pump, Nick or one of the village elders would get on the handle first and do the first pump strokes. We would take a picture of the first water coming out of that well. It would take a few strokes to get the water all the way up to the top, then it would start gushing out the outlet spigot. Clear cool water stroke after stroke. The mamas quickly appeared on the scene with their plastic buckets for filling. In some cases there were dozens of them with buckets awaiting water.
One of the wells was in Gairo town itself right outside our house we were staying in along one of the main back streets. We installed this pump early on as we wanted to be able to watch its use all the while we were there. Ironically enough as Gairo is a much bigger town than a small outlying village, we would have a lot of people to stop by and watch but no officials to come around and organise the local people. It is a shallow installation of 30 m, so it did not take long to install. Some of the neighbouring kids we had made good friends with back in Jan-Mar were there and they helped where they could. They are a lot of fun too. Once the pump was pumping water, the people seemed to come from every house we could see to get water. In Gairo, the water is normally a gravity fed system from up in the distant mountains. It is only turned on every 3rd day however as it is shared with other towns too. Water from this source is charged at 20 shillings (2 cents)per 20 liter bucket. But with this pump on their main back street, providing water at any time and it was free, this was a big deal for them. That poor pump was pumped from dawn to dusk every day by mamas or children. It seemed they were doing a pump stroke about every second, over 12 hours that is a lot of strokes. The pump is really designed to be used by a taller somewhat strong person that can do full strokes of the handle getting maximum water per stroke. However a lot of the women are shorter as are the kids and they would not have the arm strength to do full pump strokes time after time. Instead they would pull the handle down then lean over it with stiff arms and then bounce up and down on their feet (as their legs are stronger than their arms) to jiggle the handle up and down about 10% of its stroke. They can keep this up for ages albeit at a low water flow rate. We’d go out there time and time again to show them how to do full strokes to get full water flow and try to tell them it was better for the pump to do long slow strokes rather than these short rapid strokes. They would listen for a few minutes then 10 mins later you could come back and a new set of mamas or kids were on it doing the jiggle again. There were just too many different users over a full day to try to tell them all how to do it properly. After 2 days the Gairo pump stopped pumping water so we had to pull it out to see the problem. We could tell it was not working when we drove up to it as there were no people around using it. This was a very good learning exercise for Nick and Jonas. They were able pull the pump out and investigate where the problem was without Ross showing them where to look for the problem. The bottom cylinder internal plunger had unscrewed there by letting water back out the bottom again. We screwed it back together again tight with a big pipe wrench and reinstalled the pump. It worked well again and all the people came back with their buckets. 2 days later the same thing happened. Nick wanted to leave it not working for a few days to teach the people a lesson that they need to not do the jiggle stroke as that probably helped the bottom valve to unscrew. After we did pull the pump again and take the bottom cylinder apart and saw the same valve had come unscrewed I explained to Nick and Jonas there was a liquid called LockTite that was designed to keep threads from coming unscrewed. We had to search almost every hardware type store in Gairo but eventually found an equivalent product. We reassembled the valve and let it dry a day before reinserting the pump in the well. For the next 2 weeks after, till we left, the pump worked perfectly.
The SWN pumps had 4 m long rods that are made up of an outer PVC pipe 1-1/2” in diameter and a 3/8” diameter inner stainless steel suction rod. We noticed that over a 4 m section, the PVC was 10 mm longer than the steel rod. Hence over a 50 m length of assembled rods there was a 120 mm difference in the inner steel rods compared to the outer PVC pipe. This caused a problem and would not let the pump piston in the bottom cylinder have full travel. It didn’t matter on the shallower pumps but on these 50 m deep installations it was a problem. There were 4 of them too. We contacted the supplier in Morogoro and asked them to make up 4 short rods 100 mm long. When we added these short steel rods to the stack up of the 4 m long steel rods, that extra length let the pumps work properly giving full flow per stroke.
These 4 deep (50 m +) SWN pumps also had special bottom valves to allow then to pump from greater depths. After we had finished installing the deepest one at 57.5 m deep, when tested, even though the pump pumped water the action just felt wrong. Ross explained to Nick that we would have to pull the pump out to see what the problem was. We arranged to do this in a couple of days time as we knew it would be tricky. By now the 57.5 m of rods were also full of water and the whole set up was very heavy, 200 kg approx. We had to devise a slow and safe way to be able to lift these out using a lot of people to help lift. The problem was a manufacturing flaw. One of the steel fittings in the bottom valve had a bit of casting slag still in it that the valve was catching on. This was preventing the valve from moving up and down. We filed it off and the pump worked fine after that. It had taken 8 hours to pull the pump out, find the problem and repair it and then reassemble it back in the well again. Another good practice session for Nick and Jonas to learn from.
After we had finished the pump work, and the day before we left, the ADRA crew in Gairo had a little farewell meeting for us to say thank you for coming down to help them with their project and for getting to know each other. They presented us with some local gifts. A Kitanga for Ramona and a Maasai wrap for Ross. This was such a great moment to share with them.

Oh No Another Injury that wasn’t in the Brochure

2009-07-31T08:53:00.000-07:00

Last Sunday ended up quite a bit different to what we thought it would on Sunday morning. We went up to the neighbouring Danish run training center for a game of squash. Max had come back from the States full of enthusiasm to play some sports. The options are limited here so he bought back a volleyball/badminton set along with tennis balls, squash balls and ping pong balls. So he was itching to get some game going. We had a short warm up and he was ready to start a game. He was quite aggressive and has a good eye for the ball. He was up, then I got up a bit then he started to come back. He hit a ball that bounced back deep into the left back corner. I ran over flicked the ball back with a reaching out backhand and then to stop quickly and get back to the center of the court, I pushed off the wall with my left arm. Oh no, that felt weird and what’s worse it still feels weird. I realised with sinking diamay, my left shoulder was dislocated. We tried with Ramona or Max to lift it back into position but no such luck. Max dashed back to the Adra office to get his Landcruiser as would have to drive somewhere to get attention. Ramona called some other volunteers to ask if they knew of any adequate medical places we could go. There are some local village clinics, but after having seen the Gairo one, I said no lets go into Arusha even though it is a 30 min drive as they will have better qualified people. The bad thing about that drive is the large number of speed bumps and judder bars along that road. Not what a sore shoulder needs.
One of the ex-volunteers is a nurse at the Arusha hospital now. Luckily Ramona had her number so we called her while driving and she then called the doctor on duty to let him know we would be there shortly. Turns out he is an orthopaedic of all things, lucky for me as I was then envisaging a 6 hour drive along a rough road to Nairobi in Kenya. After not too long of a wait and being shuffled around 3 different rooms the doctor came in and took me to a small theatre for a general sedation while he put the shoulder back in place. I woke up all bandaged up but no longer in pain thank goodness.
So now it is two weeks in a sling then light duties for quite a while and physiotherapy though I can’t see that being too effective here. It means it will further delay our return to Gairo to finish installing the pumps for those poor drought stricken villagers. TIA

So between Ramona I we have now dislocated 2 joints in 7 months while in Tanzania. The irony is it is not to do with work but playing sport in our free time.

To Protect and Serve

2009-07-31T07:30:00.000-07:00

In Mid July we were asked to accompany another manager to Gairo to access the progress of the projects Latrine construction and Rain Water collection sub-projects. While there we wanted to go and visit the supplier of the pumps we have been waiting on for months. The three of us drove down in our 4WD. It takes 10 hours. Along the way you drive through various villages along the road side. A good part of the way is a very dry area and the villagers must be very poor. The houses are mainly single room mud brick with thatch roofs. Very few crops or animals in sight. Every time you pass through a village the local police are out standing on the road. They don’t have any vehicles so they can’t go far from their office (shack). They stand out on the road and flag down almost every truck and bus and some cars. They stop them to check registration papers, insurance papers and anything else they can think off to find an infringement and get a bribe to let the driver go. This happens in almost every village. It must take the trucks hours and hours of extra time to make a trip with all the stopping they get every 20-30 km. In between the villages you can drive as fast and as bad as you like..Since the police have no cars they can’t go out to patrol the roads. They do not appear to be too interested in road rule infractions, just stopping trucks and cars to get a bribe. Even on the road from Usa River, where we are based, into Arusha, any police from a western country would have a field day. The driving is so bad and dangerous. The amount of traffic tickets they could give out and earn revenue for the government would have to be very large. But none of it gets caught. There are drivers passing on blind corners, coming over hills, some pass on the left, some just pull out into the opposing land and flash their lights at the then oncoming cars to try to get them to pull off the road to be let by. At some times the traffic going one way is 4 wide when the road is 1 lane each way. Not often thank fully though.

Anyway back to the Gairo trip. We got stopped three times on the way down. Check registration, check insurance, check to see if we have a fire extinguisher... We did get one speeding ticket and we were going over the posted limit. The car behind us was going faster and they tried to wave them down to but he just kept on driving. With no police vehicle they have no way to catch them. The guy behind that got pulled over too but he left in just a few minutes, where as it took about 30 mins for them to write out a ticket in triplicate to us. I asked the ADRA guy with us how come that driver got to leave so quickly. He said he saw him slip a note out the window.

There are some entrepreneurial teenagers trying to sell ears of maize along the side of the road at one place. They just may not last long at the job however. They stand out in the middle of the road waving ears of maize as you drive up at highway speed then at the very last minute step aside.

We have the Pumps!

We spent two days at Gairo making notes on the project. We also visited the pump supplier for the pumps we had been waiting on since April. After a few hours of drama we finally got the situation worked out and took the pumps back to the ADRA office in Gairo.
We had taken 3 soccer balls down to Gairo to give to the kids down there we had become friends with then back earlier this year. They were so excited to get a gift from the mzungus. They raced off to show their mum and other family members. (No fathers around) It was good to see them happy as they have such a little.
On the way back to Arusha from Gairo we got stopped another 3 times. Registration papers, insurance, ... We came across yet another two dead trucks i.e. trucks and trailers lying on the side of the road after rolling over.
We’ll be going back down to Gairo in a few weeks to finish the installation of the pumps which will be good to see the villagers get what they have been waiting for.

Back at Usa River in the meantime we have been working on writing a manual for the use of QuickBooks that ADRA is going to implement to its accounts staff in the next few weeks. We listed all the common functions the staff will need to do and have written detailed instructions on how to perform those steps. We think they will be so excited to use such a modern program after being with a DOS based program and manual documents for so long. It will be about a 40 page manual by the time we have finished. Max arrived back from his trip to the United States and bought back 3 new notebooks for the accounts staff to use. The internal battery of the notebooks will prevent them from losing their work when the power gets shut off with no notice which is a frequent occurrence. We had some network cabling installed in the accounts office to set up a little network for them so they can communicate to each other through the computers and share the various accounts files. These are all big steps for the staff to take and we know we will have to take a lot of time to explain all this new setup they are being introduced to.

The female dog on the ADRA campus had 7 puppies 8 weeks ago. They have just now learned they can run around and chase each other. They are little balls of fluff. Their faces are so cute with their big puppy eyes. We built a moveable mesh pen for them so they can stay outside during the day to get fresh air. They just love it. They yap and stand up with their little paws against the mesh whenever we walk by.

Where are the Pumps?

2009-06-30T03:35:00.000-07:00

We still do not have the pumps to go finish off in Gairo. First there was to be a 6 week delay from the supplier in Morogoro while they imported them. Then when the pumps came in they said the VAT exemption we had obtained was invalid. They were the ones who told us how to get the exemption back in February. (It takes 6-8 weeks to get an exemption through the government offices). We were told by the sales manager, the owner was overseas. We told the sales manager the exemption was valid but he refused to acknowledge it. We went back to the tax office to check and they confirmed ‘yes it was valid’. Then when the project coordinator (pc) in Gairo went back to the supplier’s office again, there was a policeman outside saying he had locked the business as the business had back taxes owing. The pc did some digging around and found the business in another location in Morogoro, but there were no signs up or anything to say they were there. And the business owner was not overseas after all! They said they had tried to call the PC but could not get a hold of him?? They have his numbers, all our email addresses so that seems quite strange. So here we are after 12 weeks and we have no pumps, we do not know if we will get them from this supplier at all and the money is just stolen of if we do get them, when is unknown. Every day is a different storey by the time the word gets from Morogoro to Arusha. Very inefficient. TIA. I’ve started dealing with the manufacturer direct in Holland and we can get them from them if need be at lower cost but still another 6 weeks shipping time.

We started planning a procedure to use Quickbooks for the new accounting system for the organisation at their Usa River headquarters. Ramona knows other similar programs quite well so she seems to be able to find her way around the software easily. The time consuming part will be to work out the opening balances on the various accounts and enter them into Quickbooks before they change again.

The baby home was given for kitset incubators to use for premature babies. They needed to be first put together so we volunteered to do that. Once the wooden sides were assembled, we wired in the electrical heating system. Then they were varnished. Finally the clear perspex covers and tops were added.

The 24th June was Ramona’s birthday. We try to spend her birthday on a mountain or a big hill somewhere every year. Since Mt Meru (4562 m) is just a couple of miles away and it is quite the big mountain, we set out to drive up to the base a bit and spend a few hours hiking up there. Marsha came with us too as she had been to that spot before and sort of knew where to go. It is not a well known path and not a tourist trail by any means. We think it is more a path the local farmers use to move up and down the mountain. The lower slopes have very fertile soil and a lot of small area crops are grown, all tilled by hand with a hoe. Once on the trails off the main tarmac road it is a winding, dirt trail up the lower slopes. We were often in quite thick bush so easy to get disorientated very quickly. Very few vehicles drive up that far we concluded There are no maps, no signs, no nothing to tell you where you are. . All you know is up and down the mountain. We got so lost up there! We ended up driving a long way in the wrong direction along this path, narrow at places, with water and mud filled ruts, half buried big rocks, a bridge made of planks thrown on some other planks to cross a small stream. Bit worried about that one. So after a while we turned back, Ramona and Marsha had to re-lay some of the planks as they had shifted from the first crossing. We followed a new trail downhill and came back on to the main tarmac road again after about ½ an hour and found ourselves about 10 miles away from where we had first started. So OK, now that we knew a little about the lay of the land, we drove back to the start point and looked for a turn me must have missed to take us up the mountain and not along it. We found it very early on and up we went. This time we picked up a local girl along the way, hoping she would tell us the right way to go. She almost did, as she thought we were giving her a ride home and we missed the last turn off again. Another local pointed it out to us, (no English spoken up there). So we parked and hiked up for an hour as by then it was getting late. Had late lunch up there and then returned. Driving down was meant to be easy as there was only one right turn we thought. But not to be, we got lost again! So for the second time that day there we were driving down a dirt tail not knowing where we were, the locals looking at us probably wondering what the mzungus were doing there again. This time we came out about 3 miles away from where we started off the tarmac road.
Last Saturday, we went into Arusha to watch, on a big screen, the All Blacks play France again in NZ. There was one French guy and 6 of us in the bar, so good for barracking against the French. Just after that game finished we heard the Wallabies were to play Italy in a test match in Melbourne. We changed bars to a restaurant and had lunch and watched that game. Then not long after that game finished, the Springboks played the Lions in a test match in Durban, so we stayed and watched that game too. It was amusing how the matches all lined up in one after another in Africa time with the games being played in the late afternoons in three different countries.
On Sunday we along with some other volunteers had a ½ way to Christmas dinner at one of their houses. Roast chicken and potatoes with salads and vegetables. Finished off with a pavalova and Christmas pudding. There were 10 of us including three volunteers from Germany. Andrea had made up paper hats for us all to wear. The previous day I was lamenting over the death of Farrah Fawcett and so my hat had Farrah4ever on it. Ramona’s hat had Birthday Girl on it. The pavalova I baked in a gas oven so it was difficult to control the heat levels. It rose up quite quickly to this flat domed shape and made a stiff thin crust on top. Then when I turned the oven off to let it slowly cool, at some point the inside collapsed down taking about half of the top crust down with it. So in appropriate Tanzania fashion the pavalova looked like an old volcano with a large deep crater inside. Just like the Ngorogoro game reserve crater.

On Hold in Arusha

2009-05-30T01:58:00.000-07:00

At the end of March we left Gairo to head back to Australia for two weeks. The work at Gairo had come to a stop almost as we are waiting on more pump parts to come in before we can install the remaining 14 pumps. Our worker in Gairo, Nik was going to finish off the remaining 4 pump slabs to be constructed and be ready for the arrival of the pumps. We went to Dar es Salam for a couple of days, where we got the truck serviced, caught up with Max the ADRA director there for an afternoon to debrief him on the Gairo progress, plus get some more great meals from the Pub we stay next to when in Dar.
In Australia we went to a Wedding of Matt and Lauren in Sydney. Matt worked with us in our old company EE. They had chosen a nice venue and planned a great day and a follow up BBQ for Sunday the day after. Congratulations to Matt and Lauren.
We got to spend some good time with our 2 cats in Melbourne. They were well adjusted to Sarah and Blair looking after them while we have been away and didn’t freak out too much when we came home. Sarah and Blair spoil them so much. That is because they are so cute.
We got to catch up with most of our old EE friends one night at a Pub in Port Melbourne which was very nice. Thanks to all who came.
Then it was back to Tanzania via J’burg again. Back at Arusha we are doing various jobs to help out as needed. One night we had a Pancake night. Ramona and I bought a bunch of berries, syrup and ice-cream and cooked up pancakes for about 14 people. Scrump it was. Another night Max and his family and some friends had a small bonfire out back of their house. We sat around the fire and told a few stories did some star gazing, sang a few songs. On the weekends we have been catching up with the other VSA volunteers around. Some good lodge meals, a few Sunday afternoon beers, good discussions on Africa, places to visit in Tanzania, and what is next for us all after our assignments are over. Most of the other VSA volunteers here at the moment are finishing their terms this year or early next.
We’ve taken on a big project at Adra to implement a new accounting software package and a review of their admin systems. They are switching to Linux for security and anti-virus reasons, so any new software has to run on Linux which makes it a challenge. Ramona is trialling the various packages out and noting their pros and cons. Linux is meant to be as easy as Windows but we have yet to see evidence of that. One day I got stuck for the whole day just because I couldn’t launch a file. It had to be done in terminal mode and that is so unfriendly and un-intuitive. Max’s son Brendon knows it well though so we had to wait for him to get free time to help us out.
The national power company (who is a monopoly) announced last week that they were going to start power outages as they could not meet the demand. So in addition to the power going on and off several times a day from a few minutes to hours, they now are turning the power off at about 7 pm at nights for a few hours it seems. So now our kit for walking outside at night has to include carrying a torch. I cannot imagine the loss to the country when they turn the power off, especially during the day and shut down all the businesses. Not only does the power company (govt owned) loose all the income they could have been generating, the loss of sales revenue from business shutdowns for the nation must be substantial. I’ve been reading a history book on the great scientists since the 1500s, the start of the renaissance. One thing that comes out clear is once electricity was invented and made available, the pace of modernisation of those societies was very fast. Without a reliable source of electricity it seems countries like Tanzania will always struggle. The people want it but many probably cannot afford to buy it even if it was available and the government says there is not enough money to build more capacity to generate more power. i.e. a no win situation. Without the foresight to invest in infrastructure, a country cannot move forward.
I’ve been writing a paper on and off since we have been here on some basic problems and solutions I see with Tanzania. I am sure it will win a Pulitzer prize when it is finished which it nearly is. So stay tuned. It is called Lions for Cows. Email us if you would like a copy of it sent back to you.

The Water Bringers

2009-03-29T02:05:00.001-07:00

We have been told the local villagers from around the 6 villages we have been working in have given us a nick name. It is in Swahili, Wanaleta maji which means the Water Bringers. We probably have been a bit different to other people they may have seen over the years. A lot more hands on. We had gotten water in every well we drilled for them. Over the process of drilling the wells to installing the hand pumps that we have been out to each site numerous times to do something to the well, like build the slab, pump test it, bail water from it etc and each time some of the villagers had come out and seen us getting water out of these wells. So there must be a lot of local people who have seen us getting water from these wells and some of the different villagers have been talking to each other to come up with this name. Kind of Cute!

Installing the first hand pumps

2009-03-29T02:04:00.001-07:00

Ramona and I had gone to Morogoro to buy enough parts to complete 3 of the 17 hand pumps needed. We installed these pumps in three different villages to give them a sample of what was to come. So last Sunday Ramona and I along with Nick our local helper and 3 of the local kids we have become friends with, loaded up the land cruiser and headed out to the first site. The pump sections are in 4 m lengths installed one at a time, lowering the assembly down the well 4 m further every time till the desired depth is reached. For each section, there is a stainless steel 10 mm inner sucker rod to connect up first then the outer PVC tube. It took a few trials to figure out how to do this efficiently and safely as once there were several lengths assembled it was too heavy to hold up by hand and the risk of dropping the assembly down the well was too high. The week before I had made up two sets of V blocks that would clamp around the outside of the PVC and act as stops to suspend the assembly at the top of the well so no one had to hold the weight. During assembly it became clear we needed a forked tool to hold the inner rods up above the PVC outer casing to allow the next inner rod to be connected to the lower inner rod. A trip back into Gairo to buy a piece steel and the use of a hack saw to make this tool solved the problem. After about 2 hours the first pump was installed and ready to go. I gave the handle a few pump up and downs and though I could hear water none came out. I gave it a few more with the same result. I started thinking, oh, what could be wrong? It is quite a simple set up. One of the village elders came over and we pumped a few more times and water started pouring out of the pump. Clear cool water just running out on to the pump slab we had made. The look on the villagers faces was one we’ll never forget. The word went around quickly and more and more people started coming out. Not that many but enough to make a crowd around the slab. The people were smiling, laughing and pointing at the water coming out. They quickly arranged for some buckets to put under the spigot to collect this valuable resource. Ramona said she was holding back tears from seeing the joy on these people’s faces. One mama with the usual baby on her back got on the pump and as she was pumping up and down you could see the baby’s head bobbing up and down like a ride on a bucking bronco. It made for a good video!We timed how long it took various people to fill a 20 liter ‘plastic’. A fit young male was about 1-1/2 min, an 8 yr old kid was about 2-1/2 mins and the mama with baby on back was 2 mins. This means on average it means they would pump about 600 lph while pumping.
After the first village and armed with the right tools now we went to the 2nd village to install the next pump. This pump was right beside a group of mud houses so there were plenty of people to come and see what we are doing. We had the pump installed in about 2 hours with a good sized group of watchers. Nick started pumping this pump for the first time. Just like the first one, after a few strokes, water started coming out of the spigot. More clear cool water. The people quickly saw what was happening and started bringing buckets of all colours pushing to get their bucket at the head of the queue. They all wanted a turn on the pump, talking loudly, laughing and smiling. One of the elder mamas there took charge of them and organised the empty buckets on the right and full ones on the right. We had our camera out to take pictures of different people and expressions. Once they saw this they all wanted their picture taken. Mzungu Mzungu cries were frequent to attract our attention. When you show them the picture on the camera screen, they laugh and scream and jostle around.
The third pump was not quite so dramatic. It was on a site that was out of sight of the local villagers so most of them did not know we were there. A few trickled down while we were there and got their buckets filled. One mama was on her way to the nearby water pit with green water in it when one of the guys called her over to get fresh water from the pump. This well is a Seep well, which is a name given to a well that has a low recharge rate, a lot lower than the above 600 lph. This means the people could be able to pump the well dry. We tested this out and after about 45 mins the pump stopped lifting water. We left it for 4 hours and when we came back there was plenty of more water again that had collected in the well. So these villagers may have to wait a while between pumping sessions it seems, but there will still be many buckets to pump from the well over a day.

Mikumi Wildlife Park

2009-03-29T02:00:00.000-07:00

We are heading back to Arusha in a couple of weeks, for several months while we are waiting on pump parts to come in before we can carry on with the project. Hence we took the opportunity before leaving the area to go visit the Mikumi National park. It is straight south of us, not that far, but the dirt roads are not too good so it is best to drive east to Morogoro for 2 hours, then back south west to the park for 1-1/2 hours as that is all sealed road. The park is unique in that the sealed road actually drives right through the park from east to west and continues on to some other southern Tanzania towns. This means you can be driving along and come across a troop of baboons sitting on the road, or a herd or giraffes crossing the road. Elephants are plentiful as are impala along the road. Quite surreal. Big fines if you hit an animal through. There are speed bumps, vicious ones, all along the road so you can’t drive fast in most places anyway. We being tourists would stop to take pictures, where as the truckies and buses would get impatient with us and go around us at speed. The park on the north side of the road is about 1/3 of the total park, the other 2/3rds are to the south of the road but there is not much in the way of roads and tourist activities on that south side.The park headquarters is about ½ way along the road and then turn off to the north a few 100 m to go through their gate and access the interior of the park. It is all gravel sand roads in the park but in quite good condition. 4 WD not needed at all. You have to stay on the roads and are not allowed to get out of your car. This makes it a bit difficult to get some pictures at times. An open top vehicle would be an advantage. We just used out little Pajero. We hired a guide for $10 for the day to shows us what roads to drive on, and give us good information about the various animals.The park is quite flat with open long grassy areas and them some other places with more trees.
There are quite a few different animals to see. As well as the above are eland, warthogs, lions (we didn’t see any that day), leopards (though almost impossible to find in any park), lots of zebra and wildebeest, water buffalo, hippos, (who make the cutest deep based loud umph umph umph sound to each other), crocs, and lots of birds from small to medium size.
We stayed at a tiny hotel ( only 4 rooms) in the town of Mikumi right on the western side of the park outside the park boundary. Run by a Swiss-Tanzanian couple, great restaurant and bar. Real western food, oh Boy! There are a few safari lodges in the park where you may get big animals walking around outside your room. They are almost $500 a night however. Though very accessible, there are not many visitors to this park so you are not waiting behind other vehicles to see animals etc.
We drove around the park on Saturday and on Sunday we headed further west along the sealed road. The next big town is called Iringa and the Lonely Planet says it is a nice drive from the plains of Mikumi up a gorge 170 km to reach Iringa perched atop the hills. We didn’t have time to drive the whole way and still get back to Gairo at dusk, but drove most of it to see the scenery in the gorge. It is mostly too steep to farm so there are not many people living in that area and it is mostly forest and rocky bluffs with a decent sized river at the bottom. It was indeed a nice drive. The road even though sealed was in major need of repair. Dang!. There were so many broken down trucks or trucks in some form of accident, all the way along it. We’ll have to do it again and get all the way to Iringa next time.

Buckets and Buckets of Water

2009-03-07T03:59:00.000-08:00

This week while the drillers were waiting for a resupply of materials, we went off to pump test some of the already finished bores. When we had first drilled each bore we had flow rate tested them to ensure they were yielding sufficient water before deciding to complete the bore or drill deeper. Now the goal of the pump testing was to pump a lot of water from the bore to see what level the bore could sustain a flow rate for. We estimated the village women could not pump faster than 500 lph or in their terms 25 buckets per hour. Hence we would start the pump testing with the QED Hammerhead pump (see www.qedenv.com)at 15 m deep below the top of the pump slab and let it pump to see if it could maintain that 500 lph flow rate or if it would draw the level down in the well to the level of the pump and the pump would stop and start as water trickled into the well. If it did this then we would lower the pump another 5 m and let it run again, if it drew it down again then we would lower the pump to 25 m etc. Once a sustainable level was found this told us how deep to set the hand pump intake valve in the bore. It was good for the bores to be pumped for a good amount of water too as this was the first time they had been really pumped so it was a chance for the bore to clean itself out. We also measured the water salinity before and after the pump test to see if there were any changes. The water clarity was also recorded before and after on a relative basis.
On the first bore we went to pump test it was at a site where we had encountered a good amount of water while drilling. We set the pump up and turned on the compressor. There were a few villagers and kids who had come out to watch as normal, but when they saw this clear water coming out of the hose and going onto the ground, they quickly organised the women to bring their 20 l plastic buckets to collect the water. Some even bought bigger containers to put water into as well, which made for a good picture when they put them on their heads to carry home. Even little girls of about 10-12 were carrying a 20 kg bucket of water on their head. How they balance them like that is a mystery. We pumped at 500 lph for over an hour filling buckets all the time. The women were so happy as this was close to their houses as compared to them having to walk a long way to get water from their normal source. Ramona started off holding the hose but then gave it to them to hold and fill their buckets. They were pleased to take charge. We’d get to a point where we would only have 3-4 buckets to go then two girls would show up with two more buckets and on it went like this. It was quite a good feeling to be able to help them like this and gave an indication of what it would be like when we actually mount the pumps on the wells for them to use the first time.
When we went to the next well and asked them if they had any plastic buckets they wanted to fill up, they quickly supplied them. By the time we got to the third bore in that village, the word had gotten around and women and girls with buckets were lining up.
We did 3 more bores in another village after that with a similar storey. Parts of the job like this are quite rewarding.

Quintessential Rural Tanzania

2009-03-04T23:20:00.001-08:00

This one picture I realised after taking it shows so much by itself of rural life in Tanzania. It shows a woman walking home from a days work in the field, she is balancing the hoe on her head. She is pregnant and is carrying a child on her back as though the child was just another item to carry around while you do the days activities. There is another child following behind her. She probably has no money to buy a pair of shoes. The house she calls home is like the mud brick house in the back ground. The grass she is walking on has been grazed very short by the number of cows and goats they keep.

Coming to end of drilling phase

2009-03-04T22:35:00.000-08:00

We are at the end of the drilling phase of the project. It has been a fun and very interesting three months. The drillers have been a great crew and we’ve had many a laugh along the way with them even though there are big language differences. It all adds to part of the fun. The next steps are to pump test the wells at various depths to see at what depth we will need to set the pump intake to allow a sustainable pumping rate that the villages will do with these hand pumps. Somewhere around 500 lph we think or in villager terms 25 buckets per hour. The driller told us they will pump a lot less than that as these women spend all their time talking!
Then after pump testing we need to finish off the concrete block slabs that we make to mount the hand pump on and it also serves as a elevated platform for the women to pump upon and keep the pump area out of the mud that will inevitably collect around any place where there is spilt water. This activity has been somewhat going on in parallel with the drilling. The local engineer has been mostly looking after this construction with Nik (see scratched Eye posting below) our neighbour and helper. The slabs are self draining and the water is ducted away a few meters to the low ground side of the slab to keep it away from the pumping area. Finally we put a wire fence around the slab a couple of meters out with a wire gate at the end to keep the livestock out and from contaminating the area. (The fence is made of 2” pipe for the posts and 1” pipe for the post stays and apparently there is a risk of someone stealing them for their scrap value.) Go figure.
The last step will be to actually install the pumps themselves. This will (should) be a short job but the procurement process in Tanzania is very slow. Let me say it starts with at least a 4 week process to first get a original proforma invoice from the supplier for the goods you want, then apply for a VAT tax exemption from the government Tanzania Revenue Authority. The proforma has to be an original no fax or email copies so you have to physically drive to that supplier to get the invoice even if they are a 10 hour drive away then after that is the procurement process, there are no credit card purchases, there are bank transfers but errors here are common. Cash is the medium of choice in a lot of cases so that means driving back to the supplier to give them the cash and hope they have the good in stock otherwise it is yet another trip back to them. (Yes you can tell the government makes it very difficult to make tax exempt purchases as they want to collect as much VAT as they can even through it means groups who are trying to help the people in their country are having to pay over 20% more for the goods they need to do their aid work in Tanzania.) Another Go figure!So there is no planned dates for when pump installation will happen which is a shame as the villagers are excited now about getting these water pumps working having seen us out drilling wells in their villages. When they don’t get it you can guess who will get the blame, yes the mzungus.
Bore water quality is becoming an issues, lab results show high chloride content, over the Tanzanian standard so this has to be considered somehow.
We have drilled 3 wells in each of 4 villages, drilled 1 and will repair two existing wells in a fifth village, 1 well each in the 6th and 7th villages. We were to do more but the budget can only go so far. Originally we were to drill on average 17 m deep wells using the information we had been given by the water diviner who had last year located the sites to drill at. However once we started we found this was far from sufficient and we had to drill on average 55 m depths. This is a much higher cost as the drilling costs roughly on average $100 per meter. After just 5 successful bores and 3 dry ones we were about to run out of money and have to stop. The operations manager of the drilling company we are using, who is from Oregon, paid us a visit and came up with a different and lower cost drilling method to suit us. This was to use a smaller diameter down hole hammer so it would penetrate a lot faster, using less labour time and fuel to drive it, plus since our holes are in rock, not clays he said we could not use PVC to case the hole, just leave the hole walls open and put the pump drop tube down the rock hole. He also said the water will be there just have confidence and drill deeper. This we did and had 100% success rate on all the future bores. Plus we were able to get the project budget revisited and dropped some other items that were no longer considered going to be of importance, so this freed up some funds to go to more drilling. Hence between all of this we got a 2nd wind to go drill more holes and managed to drill the above. So we should get to 17 of the original 22 water sites for the villagers. It has been a challenge from many angles but good to get through to be near the target.
It would have been good to use the philosophy we had for the last 3 villages in the earlier villages. In the early villages we were very conscious of the budget and shy about going deep. Hence some wells have low measured flow rates, below what we had hoped for but at that time it was all we could afford to do. Knowing now that there probably was more water deeper down it would have been good to try to get that. We drilled right at the end of the dry season so we concluded if a well had some water now, then it should yield more water in more wet seasons. Another theory we applied early on was if we measured a well to have a low inflow rate, (called a seep well) then we would drill a little deeper and put the pump inlet at the bottom. Then every night the well would fully recharge up to the static water level, and when the women come in the morning to get water they will fill the first 10-12 buckets from the water column in the bore alone, before having to wait and pump at the slower well recharge rate. Better than no water well at all we determined.
Ramona has done an excellent job of recording all details we use on site. We have to often go back through her notes and to recall what happened back then. She says she doesn’t understand drilling at all, but to read her notes implies the opposite. We made up an excel sheet that we updated as we finished a well. It records, well name location, projected depth, actual drilled depth if drilled, drilling method, drill costs, static water level, in flow rate, salinity level, pH, the type of pump we anticipate using on that bore and to what depth to set the pump inlet. It ends up being a lot of data.
It takes about 3 days to drill a well on average, a day’s travel to and from along these dirt roads/tracks, a day or a day and a half to drill depending on the depth and then a day to complete the well and pack up again. If it rains or we get a break down it adds to this time. So for the last 3 months we’d start the day with waking up to babies (there are many here) in neighbour houses crying, chooks cackling around outside the house, roosters having a crowing competition and some pigs screaming somewhere. Breakfast, then driving our little Pajero to the current site where the drillers were (they usually camped on site in the trucks), start drilling by 9-10 am, drill or work till about 6 -7pm and head back to the house, getting there at 7-7:30. Ramona packed us a picnic lunch every day with a couple of big bottles of cold water and a couple of sodas too. The drillers would do the actual drilling work or a few times we jump in and help lift rods around if one of the crew was away. Mostly though we were observing the drilling, measuring flow rates, static water levels, and making decisions as to keep drilling or when to stop drilling.
The weather for the most part has been fabulous. Glorious sunny days, too hot if anything, just light clothes and a big sun hat. Little wind. We did get 1-2 weeks of days where it would rain in the afternoon for a few hours then stop. This was not too big of a factor but what was a big factor was it making the ground too soft for the truck to move around on without getting stuck. For a while there we spent many hours every 3rd day digging one or other of the trucks out of the dirt. But then it cleared up again to more very nice weather. It made being on site quite pleasant some days. On the south and west are mountains to look at, there are big granite rock out crops spread around which are pretty and fun to spend a few hours climbing on. Some villages have more trees than others which makes them nice. Sometimes we were in or on the edge of a maize field or in the middle of grazing grounds with shepherds around with their live stock of cows and goats. (Alas there are no longer any wild animals around). There were always from a few to 100’s of spectators around. Lots of children(watoto menge!).

Gifts for Drillers

2009-03-04T22:27:00.000-08:00

One a recent trip to Dar es Salam we bought the drillers some gifts. The idea came from a week earlier we were out after dark digging one of the trucks out of soft dirt that it had gotten stuck in. The drillers were under the front axle trying to jack it up to put logs under the wheels. They were using their phones to provide some light. Ramona remembered we had out hiking head lamps in the Pajero and so got those two to lend to the drillers to work with. They were really pleased and asked the next day if they were a loan or could they keep them. We said they were a loan, but it gave us the idea of the gifts. So in Dar we bought each of the 4 of them a head lamp. Plus they have very little work safety equipment so we bought a pair of safety goggles, ear muffs and finally a set of long leather work gloves for each of them. The drilling truck has a welder on board as they often do welding of the steel surface casing or welding of a plate on top of the finished bore to stop kids throwing things down the well. They had no earth strap on the welder and had to tie/tack the earth wire to what they wanted to weld. So we bought an earth clamp too. When we came back and gave them to them they were so pleased, saying Acente over and over again. They use the items all the time now. The welder ‘Babu’ was quite excited to have a real earth clamp. He put it on the next day and then did some other repair on the welder too.

Scratched Eye

2009-02-22T10:33:00.000-08:00

Last Sunday (week ago) we were out late helping dig one of the drillers trucks out of a field. It was on a dirt road with bushes on each side close to the truck. I was digging behind the passenger wheel and throwing the dirt/sand out to the side. Somehow I hit a branch with my head and a branch flicked and whipped across my eye scratching it. It hurt quite a bit and made me stop digging and go back down the road to the back of our little Pajero truck where Ramona flushed it with a bottle of clean water she keeps there. It must have been a bit of a scene as there were about 20-30 villagers watching me by this time seeing what was up with the Mzungu. One of our helpers Nik comes up. He speaks no English so uses a lot of actions to communicate with us. He had broken a little branch off a sort of cactus bush that made a white sap come out of it. He was pointing to that and then making a movement like squeezing a women’s breast. After a while we gathered he was saying he would go off and get a lactating women (there are many here) to come and squirt milk into my eye to sooth it. We politely declined and said we were OK.
Things to experience in Africa!

Scene from National Geographic

2009-02-07T00:57:00.000-08:00

Today we experienced something while drilling that even the drillers were surprised at. It was like being in an episode of National Geographic.
We are currently in this village Luhwaji west of Gairo. Here a village is a collection of several 100 mud houses on dirt roads and trees with maybe 1-2 primary schools. The roads are often poor quality, have no road signs or anything to hint of any money being spent of any official order. Almost no cars, just people walking or maybe on a bicycle. A few water points scattered around with a bunch of women and plastic buckets around them when the water lines are turned on every 3-4th day.
Each village has an chief executive officer who voices that villages affairs to meetings of surrounding villages or to higher up the chain to a ward executive. The CEO will have several executive officers. Then there are some village elders who have respect and can have a say in what goes on. There will be a few essential shops scattered randomly around and usually a pool table on a road side somewhere with a bunch of your males hanging around it.
Luhwaji is relatively flat so I was confident we would find water at 30 to 50 meters deep. The first hole to 30 m was dry so we moved to the next recommended location about 10 m away. The project is having to drill deeper depths everywhere we go. So we are very conscious of drilling extra amounts. At the second site it started out promising then got into hard rock again at about 15 m deep. Ramona and I took one of the village executives with us to go scout out another site (site 5) to drill on in case this current site ends up dry too. We tell this guy that this is no water where we are currently at and we may try this other site.

When we get back the drillers are at 21 m and still dry as a bone. So we stop to take yet another rethink. The executive office who had just been in our car comes over to talk to Jacob the local engineer we are working with who also had just arrived on his motor bike. They go back and join a bunch of others and you could tell they wanted a conference on something. A lot of fast Swahili talking and pointing. We have a crowd of over 300 watching us now and looking at this little conference going on. I make this joke to Ramona that as long as they are not sharpening up their spears we are OK.

Jacob comes back and tells us that the reason we have not found water is that the village elders did not get together and pray for water at this well. They need to pray to their gods and make a blood sacrifice to ensure there will be water for them. So sure enough we all stop working and a group of elders come up to the back of the drill rig with a chicken. We walk a good distance away. They start praying then slaughter the chicken and drip the blood around the well head somewhat. Then we go back and carry on!

The well was still dry however at 60 m where we stopped.

Life of a Tanzanian Driller

2009-02-07T00:23:00.001-08:00

Got some good first hand experience of the life of a TZ driller this past 2 weeks.
The first 3 bores we drilled were close to Gairo so it was a 10 min drive back down the road to the town. Then on Wednesday we moved to a village called Mshugi which is 12 km north of Gairo. Big deal you say! It took 8 hours for the drillers to get their trucks there. They use two trucks about 10 ton units I would guess. Tandem back wheels. One has the drill rig on it and the other is a support truck carrying the PVC pipe, water, sand, extra drill rods, shovels etc.
8 hours involved driving on these dirt roads whose condition deteriorates every km further you get from Gairo. It involves crossing 3 river beds which are sand here. One had water two were dry. The one with water had a drop down into it then a steep climb back up the other side on a uneven dirt/sand surface so traction was poor at best. They got stuck here big time in the sand. It took them 3 hours to dig themselves out and then redig them out again and again. They do know how to get these trucks unstuck I must say with no fancy tools. Just bags they fill with sand, any branches or small logs lying around, a log wire rope if the first truck gets thru and the 2nd gets stuck the first can pull it through some times. We help as we can but they are a hard working team. Then got stuck 3 more times before reaching the site.The drill truck has hydraulic feet on it which they lower down when drilling to take the weight off the wheels and importantly to level the truck so they are drilling vertically not on an angle. So they use this truck to go first. Originally this truck had 4 wheel drive and a third drive shaft and associated transfer box that they use to drive the hydraulics for the drilling mast. However this transfer box broke a while ago we hear, so now the truck has no 4 wd and when they want to use the hydraulics they have to get under the truck and disconnect the rear wheel drive shaft and connect in a shorter drive shaft to run the hydraulics. Then when they want to drive again they have to undo the hydraulics drive shaft and put in the wheels drive shaft. If the truck is in the middle of running river bed then they do it in the water as there is no option.
So when this rig truck gets stuck they use these hydraulic feet to jack the truck up off the ground, pack bags of sand under the wheels and then logs if possible to provide a drive path for the next meter or so to allow the truck to get some speed up if possible. It works most of the time.
The 2nd truck has no hydraulic feet so it goes 2nd and if it gets stuck they connect a long 1” wire rope to the first truck on the other side, and the stuck truck and then pull it through. This takes hours to do every time in many cases. They must be used to it as they just get out and get on with it without too much complaining at all, more joking with each other. They get covered in sand and water and mud when there is surface water around.
Due to the difficulty of getting the trucks around and no little support pick up available, the drillers just stay out on site. Cook their food over a charcoal cooker, no washing, little laundry, sometimes restricted water, a bed either in the truck seats or a piece of foam on the ground.
After finishing the first bore at Mshugi they were to move on Sat night to the second site for the village. Ramona and I left them to pack up the trucks and then leave. It was not too far away. On Sunday morning we drove back out there which takes even us an hour to go 12 km in the little Pajero across all the same dirt trails and river beds. It is so easy to get lost out there as the villagers just walk everywhere so there are dirt trails criss-crossing all over. We get about ¾ of the way there and come across them stuck in another river bed where they were not meant to be. Apparently some villager had given them some confusing directions. This time the support truck had gone first for some reason and it was a steep drop down into the sandy bed and a climb out the other side. It was stuck big time. They had gotten stuck the night before and had been up all night working to get it out as if you leave it to sit it gets even more stuck. So they were trashed by the time we got there. They were about ready to try to tow the support truck out backwards again with the rig truck. The wire rope is about 50 ft long. They did manage to pull the truck out, however the rig truck then stopped pulling and the truck being towed out backwards could not see that and he was racing the truck backwards to make sure he got up the incline before getting stuck again. He slammed into the rig truck big time. Wham! Luckily no damage done to the rig truck but the folded up mast hit the canopy frame on the support truck and bent it to heck. The rig truck drives up the road another 50 yards to clear out of the way. So we all get over that and then discuss where they really were meant to have gone. It was a narrow dirt road with maize crops either side making the ground soft. This means the trucks cannot turn around until they drive back up to the intersection a few 100 yards up the road. The rig truck is still about 50 yards away when the drive of the support truck starts to back his truck up again. He races back again and you could see what was going to happen. The drilling foreman and Ramona were running up the road chasing the support truck driving backwards. The driver was looking at the rear wheels to make sure he did not get off the dirt road so did not see them yelling and waving and WHAM again into the back of the rig truck. Two 10 ton trucks colliding at 20 mph, ouch. This time there was damage to the rig truck but only to some accessories and not the important parts. It is not even my equipment and I felt sick to the stomach to see this.
Having recovered from that bit of excitement, we continued on to the real site and got stuck again in the very next river bed about 5 mins away! This was dry sand so not too bad, only an hour or so to dig them out and change the drive shafts around again. At that point I said to the foreman, let’s take a ride in our Pajero to scout the rest of the route to this last distant well as I now have serious doubts about the trucks getting there. This we did and he decided quite quickly that I was right and so we abandoned that last position. The local villagers were meant to make it more accessible too but had done nothing so they now get left off the drilling schedule. We turned the trucks around to head back to a village closer to Gairo and immediately get stuck again in the river crossing we had just gotten them out of an hour before. Another hour or two for the drillers to dig themselves out and change the drive shafts around. I said to the foreman, let’s get them to site and take the rest of the day off as they must be exhausted by now. Which we did and they were grateful to find a big tree to park under in the shade and go to sleep.
That is a hard life.

Can of Sprite

2009-02-07T00:07:00.000-08:00

Our well drilling is being as successful as we had hoped. The area is very dry and making us drill a lot deeper than originally planned which is using up the budget faster. Yesterday we were drilling in Mkalama village about 7 km from Gairo. We were close to an old (2002) abandoned well and while we were waiting on the drillers to drill more, we got to having a look at it to see why it had been abandoned. Turns out the hand pump on the top of the well had lost its bottom check valve and the villagers had never replaced it so the NGO who installed the pump came and took it away they villagers said. It is a $40 part and they had been without water from this well for about 5 years now. They were using a nearby open pit to get all their water from. Open to surrounding area run off, animals to come to, and their own washing So we figured if we got the villagers to clean out the well we could put a new pump on it and get them a lot of clean water from this sealed well. It was a 1 m diameter well as compared to the 20 cm diameter well we were drilling nearby. This old well flows at 1000 lph where as our drilled one flows at 75 lph. (different circumferential inflow areas) We chipped the concrete cap away to expose a 1 m diameter round lid and flipped it over to the side to get access to the well. It was about 4 m deep with 3 m of water and sticks in it that the locals kids and put in there over time. One of the local villagers striped down to his shorts and then put a long log down the well to act as a ladder! so he could climb down into it. Others on top lowered down a bucket on rope to him to fill the bucket then they would pull it up and dump its contents off to the side. This poor guy down the well would get water spilt all over him as they lifted it up and stones and dirt kicked down on him from the workers above. He was down there for about 4 hours filling this bucket time and time again. But he did a great job.
When he finally came out I gave him a can of Sprite for his efforts. This is one of the Aluminium cans with the pull tab. He put it on the ground not really knowing what it was let alone how to open it. This old Masai shepherd came in his purple red wrap around and staff, and peered at the can, picking it up looking at the top and bottom and the ring. It was like a scene from ‘The Gods must be Crazy’ movie as he had obviously never seen a soda can before and didn’t know what to make of it. They left taking the unopened can with them.
You see some weird things here at times.

Deforestation

2009-02-03T11:50:00.000-08:00

One activity you can’t help notice as you drive around Tanzania is that in addition to a lot of women carrying buckets of water on their head there is an equally large amount of people carrying fire wood around. At quite often intervals along the road side you see bags of chopped up fire wood for sale. This appears to be quite an industry for young men. The road site sale locations vary from 1-2 bags for sale to over 30 bags in some places. The men just go back into the bush off the road and cut down the trees then cut it up into smaller pieces for the buyer to use in their cooking. The bags are quite big and heavy so you see them more being transported on bicycles. Bicycles are used more to load up for transport. The rider then pushes the bike around with its load on the back as it is too heavy and unstable to try to ride. Sometimes there are 2 of these large bags on a bike which makes for a very large load. Or you will see women walking along with bundles of sticks on their heads, or if it is a bigger branch, then maybe a single piece of wood on their head. Less frequently you will see whole acreages cleared with the stacked up logs and branches ready for moving away. Most of the forest here is small trees or scrub so there is little construction quality or size wood available. There are some fences around houses or stock pens made of smaller diameter branches though that the owners put up. Similar to the water problem there is no practical way for the rural villagers to get fuel to cook their meals other than to go find it. This means cutting down trees or branches themselves or to go buy these bags of cut up wood. There is no electricity to speak of run to these rural village houses. Even if someone could afford to install the infrastructure for running power lines to all these villages, the people there more than likely could not afford to buy electricity. Likewise they cannot afford to buy bottle propane gas and they would have trouble transporting it around if they could. Consequently there is no real infrastructure to buy bottled gas anyway in these rural locations. Those that could afford it would have to travel a long way to purchase some, which requires a lot of time as the transport would likely be a bicycle or a bullock drawn cart.
From the west we encourage the villagers to boil surface water before they use it for consumption, but this requires yet more wood to be burned so there is an extra cost to them to do this.
The population appears to be growing fast in these regions. There are a lot of women carrying babies on their backs. A rough unofficial count as we watch women walk by our work sites is that about 50% of them have a baby. Many young unmarried women have children we hear. We recently heard by a person who was at a speech put on by the president of a Children’s Fund that approx 40% of these babies do not make it to 5 yrs old though. A growing population means more fire wood is needed every year.
A climb up onto a high cliff and looking around will soon reveal to the observer that vast tracks of land are bare but for a few trees scattered around. The constant grazing of the cattle and goats by roving herders keeps any grass to a short level. Some areas are devoid of much vegetation just bareish dirt/sand. A growing population of people means a growing population of cows and goats too.
In the long run deforestation of large areas of land is a cost we will all pay with changing weather patterns. There may also be necessary support of a large number of people on a land that can no longer support them. Not to even mention what this is doing to the very valuable tourist resource of the large wild animals in these countries. The governments of these countries that are home to these big animals are meant to be their guardians, yet we seem to be trading in lions and elephants for more cows and goats.
We are told there are some programs, but to date we have not seen any attempts to farm trees to make a sustainable situation where by the trees cut down this year are replaced so that eventually each village would have its own renewing plantation to harvest their wood from. This would solve more than just the wood for the villagers problems too, the whole world would benefit at some global level.

Ramona Injury

2009-02-03T11:07:00.000-08:00

Last Wednesday Ramona and I were throwing an American football around out in the dirt street with some of the neighbouring kids before dark. They are 6-12 yrs old probably and full of enthusiasm. Some can manage quite a throw. Ramona went to catch a good throw and caught it on her little left finger first. She said ouch then a few seconds later said "I need help". Her little finger was sticking out sideways, it appeared to have been dislocated at the first joint up from the knuckle. I thought this has to go back in now as we are a long way from anywhere for real medical help. So I pulled on the finger and it dropped back into place thankgoodness and Ramona could immediately bend it as normal. She is quite brave indeed while I was cringing. The next few days the joints turned purple then that faded back to normal. It is still a little swollen however between the knuckle and that first joint.

Critters

2009-02-03T11:01:00.000-08:00

A few weeks ago we had a small 8" long snake in our lounge when we came home one night. Tonight Ramona found a small scorpion trapped in the Mosquito net over our bed!

Woof then Bang

2009-01-10T10:31:00.000-08:00

This is a bit amusing now but yesterday not so much. The kitchen we have in this temp house has a gas stove on one side and the electrical power point on the other side. We only moved into this house on Tues nite and had been fixing it up to make it work somewhat half decent at least. Some Leaking taps, some power outlets not working, some lights not working, no hot water. We bought a power strip to put in the kitchen to run the fridge and also bought a kettle and toaster. Ramona went to cook some noodles yesterday on the stove. She is scared to light these gas burners as the go woof some times. We have a little sparker we bought to light the burner as matches are too tricky. So I lit the big element on the stove and then went to light one of the other smaller ones. ½ way through that a large flame came out of the top of the stove and a large WOOF sound. The flame only lasted milli seconds but was long enough to singe the hairs on my arms. Ramona yelped and leaped back as did I. I turned the elements off and waited till our heart beats got back under control then tried the big element again. It lit then again after about 20 secs, another woof and a small flame this time came out the side. So we just turned it off again quickly. Ramona was still backed up against the other wall with her heart rate back up. Then about 1 min later the power strip we had bought which was now just behind Ramona blew up with a loud bang. This freaked her out even more as she didn’t know whether to run away from that towards the stove or run back to the power strip not knowing what was going on there at all. So making sure the stove was off and the power was off we tried to catch our breaths now and see what was going on.
Investigations showed the problem with the power strip was I had coiled up the spare lead then tied it up with a cable tie I got from a loaf of bread. This is really a no no as coiled electrical cables can cause induction heating of themselves. Where I had tied the coils together, the flex wire was melted, it had shorted out.
Next the stove. Ben the other Aust volunteer who is staying with us for the next 6-7 weeks, and I lifted the top of the stove up and examined the pipes coming from the gas bottle into the stove then spreading out, one pipe to each of the 4 burners. Sure enough that big burner had a loose nut. So what had been happening was when that burner was turned on, some gas was coming out under the top plate of the stove and filling the 4” deep cavity under that. Then once the cavity was full and the gas reached the flames on top, woof! We tightened up that nut real good like then Ben and I took turns at lighting an element then running out of the room to wait a minute or two. It all works good now.
But dang we probably aged several years in that 2-3 minutes. Ramona refuses to have anything to do with lighting the stove burners now. Can’t say I blame her.

House in Gairo for the Water Project

2009-01-10T08:20:00.000-08:00

We are now staying in this brick-plaster house by the ADRA office, completely surrounded by sand and dirt, a couple of trees around but not much else apart from the chickens. This makes it dusty when the wind blows. We mopped all the floors the first day as it has not been lived in for quite a while we think and there was a build up. But is a much better than the little guesthouse room we were in the two weeks before Christmas. The ADRA temporary Gairo office is literally right across the road about 20 meters away. There are mud brick house with thatched or tin rooves beside us. There are lots of little kids around and they sit in the dirt for hours playing or looking at the house waiting to see the mzungus come out. When you walk outside sometimes you hear Mzungu! Mzungu! and you look around a see a kid somewhere waving at you. They are quite cute. All the neighbours seem real friendly and polite. There is no trash removal service as you can imagine. The office security guard dug a hole in the back yard dirt to burn trash in. The first lot we put in there the kids came and took most of it away. But they always seem to be smiling and laughing at us.
When we came to the house the first night from Dar, Ben another Australian volunteer who has joined us in Gairo for a couple of months (but also stayed in the house over the Christmas break) said there was no running water working, 1/2 of the taps leaked when we did get some water, the toilet acted like a sprinkler, some light fixtures were missing, some of the wall power sockets didn’t work. Hence these last 5 days have been a domestic challenge. Jacob with ADRA here has been very good at getting things fixed up. He goes to find the various fundi’s (tradesmen) around town to come to the house to fix something else if we can’t. It sort of worked out well, as we had expected the drillers to come back and start work on the 5th Jan but they got delayed a week, due to full busses and the difficulty setting up accounts here for the drillers to buy fuel on account as they use a lot of it. This week’s delay allowed us to get the house sorted out and to help write an overdue annual report for the Danish embassy on the projects progress to date. As once the drillers start, we will all be out in the field 10 hrs a day and nothing else would have happened. At least now we have the house set up, and are using it as our office with the computers, printer and internet set up. Things here get fixed using the absolute lowest cost way(free if they can find materials lying on the ground that may do the job). So it all seems a bit dodgy and will it last the few months we are to be here is a good question. Gairo has no domestic running water into any houses (except ours now since we are mzungus) so there are no plumbers here. So to get any plumbing done is to use a guy who mainly uses a hammer and a coal chisel. Hot water still seems to be an elusive thing in our African adventure today except in the Dar hotels. The electrician turned up on foot with a screw driver in his pocket.

We had a local carpenter make us a table so we could set our computers up on it to have some ordered working space. A bit of a relief! (We are going to give the table to Jacob, the water engineer, when we move on so he can use it.) The carpenter’s shop is a walled in dirt yard with a few electric saws and planers under a lean-to. Nice guy who speaks good English. Today he walked around to tell us the table was ready but he couldn't varnish in his yard due to the dust so he came to varnish it in the house today. He then hired a couple of guys with a wooden cart to bring the table around to us. It is about a mile away on dirt roads.
For water we are fortunate to have a water tank on the roof. A few days a week a line gets turned on to let water flow to the house. Jacob installed a little booster pump to lift the water up to the tank. We can’t see how full the tank is, so for the first time we got up on the roof and saw how full the tank was and then measured the flow rate from the pump using a std bucket and then calculating how long it would take to fill the remaining part of the tank. We left it to run a little too long I guess and the tank over flowed on to the flat roof and started to run off the roof out through over flow pipes. Ramona had a bucket outside trying to catch the water and then other woman saw what the muzungu mama was doing so they all bought buckets too to catch as much water as they could. It is so precious they can’t waste any of it. One little boy scooped the water out of a little hole in the dirt and put it in a bucket.

Christmas 08 Trip to Kilwa

2009-01-10T08:16:00.000-08:00

After the Selous, we went on to Kilwa. Kilwa is a tiny little town on the south east coast centered on one bay about ½ mile across. Three little motels surround the bay. We stayed at the north end one which was on a cliff overlooking the ocean. Like the tropics the buildings are simply a roof with no walls as it is always warm there. The rooms were a set of thatched roof A frame units. No hot water. Power on and off. But they have a generator if needed to light up a few lights. It is quite nice to sit in a warm ocean wind drinking a cold beer in the dark, but trying to sleep in the heat/humidity with no breeze nor air conditioning (not existent) nor ceiling fan (electricity was off!) The bar and dining tables were just one bigger room with a big baobab tree growing up through the center to support the thatched roof at the center. Bob Marley was going in the back ground. Only a couple of other folks there. Nice and simple but quite a nice place once there. Mzungus would be most of the business there it seems. As usual it was off the main road and no signs how to get to it or one half fallen down one. So you have to drive thru this set of local houses and streets to get to it hoping it is the right way. They just don’t get the power of marketing over here.
We got talking to 3 young guys from South Africa in a land cruiser also staying at the motel. They were on a heck of a trip between university years. The bought the landy to go on this 3 month trip. They left Jo’burg and are driving up the east coast of Mozambique, Tanzania and Kenya then crossing over to the west side of Kenya and coming back down through the rift valley and along the big lakes there, back thru Victoria falls into Zambia, then Botswana to S Africa again. Kilwa was their first stop in Tanzania coming out of Mozambique that morning. Kilwa is about 300 km from the border. Their trip through Mozambique was somewhat hair raising with high water levels across roads, no maps of many roads, they don’t speak Portuguese, they ran out of cash and the ATMs didn’t work. Sounds like in Northern Mozambique there are no roads anyway just trails through the scrub, the villagers are educated so poorly (as they are in TZ in places) they can’t read maps and don’t even understand the concept of a map, so these guys had a heck of time trying to get to the border crossing town. The Moz to TZ border is a wide river. There is meant to be a bridge, but it is gone, there is meant to be a ferry but it sank. So here they were enough gas for 200 km and about $300. The last gas place was about 200 km back in to Mozambique. They struck a deal with the local fishermen to make a raft by lashing three fishing boats together, put the cruiser on top of that and rowing across the river for $250. They thought Tz was a modern relief to enter after Mozambique!
For some unknown obvious reason the road down the SE cost of TZ is actually sealed once you are south of Kilwa. One of the past major politicians came from one of the town in the south so maybe that was the reason. The roads were made by the Japanese and were the best we had seen so far. So once at Kilwa we thought now that we are past that danged rough road and are on tarmac we might as well see the area more as we are unlikely to come this far south again and face that rough road again. So we went further down the coast from Kilwa to Linde then Mtwara near the Mozambique border as the South African guys had said the road was good all the way.
Kilwa is known as an old center of trade back in the 1500s under the Arab traders and sultans had built palaces and houses in the area. Then later the Portuguese had come and taken over and remodeled some of the buildings or built new ones. They are all mostly ruins now but a fascinating place to go explore to see these old structures. A couple had been restored by donors over the recent years. The best ruins are on an island off the shore about 2 miles. The island is called Kilwa Kisiwani. From Kilwa beach we caught a dhow sailing boat off the beach over to the island. We went with the other couple staying at the motel with us, an English couple who worked at the British High Commission, with their two teenage sons. We all went on the same tour of the island so got to chat with them quite a bit during the day. Nice couple with an interesting career. They get posted to various places around the world in various High commission offices for 3-4 years at a time. They moved in quite high circles in Tz, so knew most of the politicians, what TZ politics was doing and likes. It was quite interesting to talk with them.
The dhow is an interesting boat. It has a center mast but no sail attaches to it. The sail is triangular shape and the long side is tied to a long pole. If the dhow is going down wind this long pole is pulled up horizontally to the top of the mast with the sail below it, so it acts like a spinnaker and billows out to catch the wind. If the dhow has to sail up wind, the long pole is tied vertical against the mast pole to make a conventional shape sale so it can tack back and forth. There is only one pulley on the boat which is used to move the sail pole relative to the mast pole. No cleats either. All hand tied. Quite crude but it works and they sail all over the place there fishing and hauling stuff back and forth. We spent about 4 hours on the Island on the tour of the ruins. Must have taken over 100 pictures. There is one village of locals there where we stopped to get a coke as it was quite hot. There was a nearby water well with ladies dropping buckets about 30 ft down it to get water. Not 20 yards away was a hand pump over a bore that some NGO had installed fairly recently (with in 2 yrs) it looked like. There were kids there using it to pump water into plastic buckets. It is a lot easier and faster to get water from a hand pump then from a bucket down a well that may be polluted as well. So I asked the guide why the women still used the well and not the hand pump. He replied in a broken English manner that the hand pump water was salty so they could only use it to wash in, not for consumption, hence the need for the water well too! I wonder if the NGO knew this? Oh well, good intentions I expect. Made me thankful we had gotten a salinity meter for testing our wells.
After the ruins we went back on the dhow to the Kilwa beach and went to one of the other motels which was right on the beach for lunch with the English family. Downed two sodas in about 15 mins it was so hot. After lunch we were walking back along the beach to our motel and one of the fishing dhows had just beached and was cutting up a shark they had caught that morning. The English guy buys a big steak off them for $6 and takes it back to our motel and asked them to cook it up for them that night.
The next day we headed south down past a town called Linde then on to the last southern town before the Mozambique border called Mtwara. Another small fishing town really. The English family were headed down there too but stopping at a little town called Mikindani about 10 km short of Mtwara. There was a restored German Boma (Old administration building the Germans had built during their occupation of Tz in the first world war.) Now it was a beautiful old building on the side of a hill in amongst this set of typical TZ buildings making the rest of the town. We stopped there for lunch as it seemed quite nice. While there the English family showed up to check in as they were staying there. They said we should too. But we didn’t want to overstay our welcome with them, so we decided to go on to Mtwara. This is an interesting little town. Sort of on a peninsula so unlike Kilwa which was a few buildings along a small dirt road, Mtwara is more spread out all over the peninsula. We had made a reservation that morning based on a recommendation in the Lonely Planet. We found it on a dirt road on the ocean front. It too was basic but amazing it is right on the water, about 10 yards off the waves. Blue and turquoise waters across the bay to another peninsula. Dhows sailing back and forth in the afternoon winds made it very picturesque. A big open air dining/bar area. Like Kilwa though there are just not many tourists there. Had it been in the western world it would have been packed. We met and chatted to a few other Mzungus on the beach staying in the budget guest houses nearby. One was from Switzerland doing an electricians job way out west in the middle of nowhere it seemed. Then we met a girl from the Peace Corps and her boyfriend who had just flown in to spend time with her. She was quite young and doing some hard yards but seemed to be enjoying it. She was assigned to the same town as the Swiss guy turned out. She had no power, no water, had to fetch her own in buckets, cook over an open fire, dirt floor I would think, no transport other than a bus. Ramona and I both cringed.
The guide book said there was a store called Safina where you could buy a few nibbles like candy, biscuits and juice etc. We turned in to the road but could see no shop, it was like a drive way. Then backing up we realized the shop was old 20ft container with this old Dutch woman sitting outside of it. We went in there and sure enough there were the nibbles. She had been in Mtwara a long time she said. The next day as we drove down the main street of the town we realized almost all of the shops were old 20ft containers side by side with a bit of wooden front structure built around it. So the whole town was based on old containers, weird, never seen anything like it. But works it seems.
The guide book also said there was a church worth checking out as it was covered in paintings of biblical scenes to help the masses understand the sermons. It had taken some German painter in the 1800s 2 years to paint these. We found it down yet another dirt road amongst local houses and little shops. It was in quite good shape. Recently replastered and painted on the outside it looked like. Sure enough on the inside were these huge wall paintings. 5 on the left of the old testament, like Noah’s ark, One of Abraham, one of Moses on Mt Sinai getting the commandments. 5 on the right of thenew testament and 1 extra large one on each end. I took quite a few pictures as it was rather impressive to see this in such a place.
We left Mtwara before lunch and drive north back to Kilwa. Stopped there the night, had one last swim in that beautiful blue water. Then the next day headed back up that danged road, another 3 hours of 5 mph. But knowing that it was only 60 km this time and it had not rained for a few days made it a less unpleasant than the trip down.
Back in Dar for 4 days we went up north on the Msasani Peninsula where most of the ex pats lived. The English family we met had recommended a set of apartment suites there to stay. It was indeed a nice place called the Slipway. It is sort of a complex, the apartment suites, several nice restaurants on the water around a courtyard, a local craft market with budget to high end wares . Being New Years Eve there was a lot of activity going on there in the courtyard. A big 2009 sign in lights, a DJ playing modern Latin, then African then Indian music, people dancing. We sat at a pub’s outside table where we could watch the goings on and drank a good amount of cold wine and cold beer. A 5 minute fireworks display brought in the New Year & woke up to have a look at it from our room.
The next day we went to an island off shore that again our English friends had told us about. The boat left from near our apartment and took an hour to get to the island. It is a marine reserve, only about 1 km long covered in trees but surrounded by white sand and some coral reefs in places. We spent about 4 hours there doing a bush walk, a couple of swims on the reefs and then hiding out of the sun under a thatch beach stall/umbrella. It was quite hot. The water was so nice that once the boat pulled up off shore and we were to transfer to the dingy to be taken ashore I jumped over board and swam ashore as it wasn’t far. Clear blue waters again.
The 2nd of Jan we went to find a big shopping mall we’d been told about that was not too far away. After a few false trials we did find it. A big, big grocery store, a Kmart type store, a Target type store, book store, house wares stores, clothing stores. We were so happy to feel like home. There are a lot of food items we cannot get in Morogoro (town nearest to Gairo) so we stocked up large before heading back to Dar for our next 12 weeks in Gairo.
We also spent time in Dar trying to find where to get items for our engineering project in Gairo. We needed, ropes, fittings, a compressor etc, Dar has a few street names, but businesses don’t give an address only a PO box and phone number. The yellow pages is minimal, don’t even think about a website for a business. It is so difficult for someone to find suppliers. You’ll see a bill board with a business name and logo and ph number. But no address oh no!! Very frustrating and unnecessary in these times. You’d think businesses would be falling over themselves to get their wares promoted in the city. The only way to find anyone is to ask someone where to find it. Then you have to hope you ask the right person who speaks the same language as you do, or make sure you ask a wider range of people to find what you are looking for. One of the expats we met said even Tanzanians who come back from working overseas for a while find it frustrating to try to do business here.
By the time we got back to Gairo we had driven about 2500 km (1500 m). Plus the Pajero was bulging with items we bought back for the project such as the compressor, a QED pump and lots of tubing, our personal items, a bulk supply of food from the Dar stores. Barely enough room left for Ramona and myself.

Trip to Selous Game Reserve

2009-01-10T08:14:00.000-08:00

On the 23rd Dec 08 we arrived at Selous for a 3 day stay. Selous is the largest game park in Tanzania and maybe in Africa. It is a game reserve as opposed to a game park as they do allow controlled hunting in the southern parts of the reserve. The northern part is where all the tourists visit. It is separated from the larger southern part by the Rufugi River. This is wide (100 m plus) muddy water river. You get to Selous by that 130 km long dirt sandy road or fly in from Dar in a little plane. Depending on what your budget is. There are a number of game lodges in the park, the ones inside cost up to$900 a night. Then there are a few lodges along the river but outside the gate. This is where we stayed. Jimbeza Lodge. It is quite rustic, very basic & features an open wall dining area on a cliff overlooking the river though a few trees. You can hear the Hippos in the water below early in the morning and at dusk. They make this cute low pitched three grunt noise. All the buildings are made of local materials, no 2 x 4s here, just branches from trees for framing etc and thatched roofs. But it makes for a nice atmosphere. The bar, where we spent quite a few hours sitting, is a bar built around a big tree then the bar counter built a bit out from that. Again no walls, just a thatched roof. The rooms were individual little single room bedrooms with a toilet/shower room on the back end. Lots of Geckos at night eating the insects buzzing around any lights. Small sandy trails between the rooms, the bar and the dining area. The package we had gotten included all meals as well and being Christmas they put on special meals for us. Even turkey with rice for one meal. Crackers and paper hats. Christmas day was spent in a safari kitted out Landrover with just Ramona, myself in raised seats, a guide and a driver. We spent 10 hours driving around different sections of the park looking for different animals. We only covered a small fraction of the park and mostly along the Rufugi. The park is mostly trees and low scrub. No open plains like the northern parks. Some places you could see 200 meter and other only 10 meters. The guide & driver were excellent. They can spot the smallest part of an animal in the trees long before our Mzungu eyes ever see it. They know a lot of details about different animals, how they behave, what they eat and drink, where they like to roam etc. Plus a lot about the trees and plants as well. The locals here apparently use the trees for a lot of medicinal purposes as they can’t afford to buy Western medicines. They uses leaves or the bark of the roots to cure things like STD, stomach problems, cause abortions, you name it they seemed to have some cure for it. Quite interesting.
At one point the driver stopped and looked at the back right wheel. We could see the shock absorber had broken in two so the guide just unbolted it and we carried on. The roads are quite rough in places, but for the most part they are not trying to drive fast. So it is kind of fun too.
By the end of the day we had seen, 3 of the big 5, elephant, lion and water buffalo. (There are no rhinos in Selous and leopards are tough to see anywhere as they are so elusive). Plus we saw hippos, wildebeest, zebra, warthog, impala, crocodiles, vultures - one species of vulture stands about 3 ft tall and are huge, a hyena, giraffes by the dozen (they are so graceful with their long legged strides), baboons and other monkeys. For lunch the guide set up a picnic table under a tree not far from the river where we could watch hippos, impala, and a slew of different birds. Quite civilized.
On Boxing Day we did a walking safari just inside the gate through the trees sort of paralleling the air strip. Not many animals there but the guide was full of info about the trees and foot prints. We did see a group of African wild dogs which are quite rare there apparently. A couple of planes came in while we were finishing. They were dropping off tourists and taking others back. That afternoon we got the guide to take us on another walk for a couple of hours along the river and through the local village there to explain the different things we were seeing. He pointed out an Egyptian cobra in a tree. We didn’t touch many trees after that. We were meant to do a river safari in a boat just before dusk, but it rained quite hard for quite a few hours so we were forced to sit at the bar all afternoon. Got chatting to other guests, so it was a good afternoon in spite of the rain.
The next morning, the day we were to leave, we did the river safari. We went down the river then back up the other side. A guide pointed out animals and birds along the river. Hippos are the big draw as they sit in the middle of the river in different pods, making their grunting noises. Very cute.

Tanzania Roads

2009-01-10T08:10:00.000-08:00

On the 23rd Dec 08 we drive into a national game park called Selous. About a 230 km drive SW of Dar es Salaam. The first 100 km was sealed and then there was a town at the turn off point, but not one sign at all telling a tourist how to get to the biggest game park in Tanzania! We pulled in at a gas station to ask if we were going the right way. Their bowzer had broken down (quite a while ago I think) so they had the front panel off and were hand cranking the pump around to get gas to flow. I took a picture and a video of this. The next part was a dirt/sand road. 5 hours for the 130 km. It was mostly dry though so the driving was quite fun really. Ramona did most of it. There were a few water crossings that made us nervous at the start. These were about 5-10 yards across and dirty water so you could now tell how deep they were. But they had a sandy bottom and they were only about 6” deep we found out after crossing a few, so the traction was good. The little Pajero (Patty Pajero) did well.
The day we left we had to drive out the same road and it had bucketed down the night before so I was a bit worried about the road out now. We had met a family at the lodge and they had a driver in a big land cruiser. They were to leave the same day, so I asked if we could follow them out and keep an eye on us. They were happy to do so. The big land cruiser with higher ground clearance and bigger engine was not a concern for those roads. So we drove out in convoy with us following them through all the now bigger puddles across the road. But it was no problem at all and the little Pajero IO easily handled it. Still another 5 hour drive in 4 wd all the way.

Once back on the main road heading south from Dar Es Salaam, we turned right to head further south to a little beach town called Kilwa that we had heard was a nice place to spend a few relaxing days. We did about 15 km of nice sealed road then it turned to crap again. Back into 4 wd drive. We were averaging 5-7 mph on this god awful road. It had rained just before and so the road was full of mud tracks, large deeper puddles, some 20-25 yards across. Luckily they too were not that deep really so the Pajero got though them fine. It was late afternoon by now, and you have to be off the roads by night in these remote regions to be safe we are told. After about 2 hours of this road, I was thinking, “hmm, should we just quit this and turn back” as we didn’t know how much more of it there was. We had just gone through a patch of large puddle after puddle, mud was oozing every where. A Toyota Hi Lux was coming the other way, a typical Mzungu car, so I flagged it down and asked them how much further there was to go. About 30 km they said, but that it did get drier than where we were at the moment. This meant it was quicker to get to the end rather than turn around and head back to Dar. So on we went and got to Kilwa just at dusk. In the tropic latitudes dusk is about 15 mins long and it gets dark quick. (no street lights either) So we were glad to be there. So for a 10 hr drive that day we did 8 of it in 4 wheel drive. Some of these are marked as main highways on the TZ map. Unbelievable they can leave the roads like this and think it is OK. It must be a huge loss of tourism potential income for them to have terrible main roads to nice areas like this.

Kilwa will boom when that last 60 km of road is sealed and it becomes a 3 hr drive from Dar to get there instead of a 6 hour drive in a land cruiser. The British father and son that owned the lodge we stayed at Selous are building a hotel on this beach in Kilwa (which will make 4 places for accommodation then) for this exact reason I expect. We met the son and his girl friend at Selous then later we met them again in Kilwa and chatted to them for a bit.

More Generous Donors

2008-12-20T06:59:00.000-08:00

Two other companies have very kindly donated equipment for the project here in Gairo. QED Environmental Systems Inc. of the USA, http://www.qedenv.com/ have donated a Hammerhead Pro® pneumatic pump with a 40 m tube set and fittings that we will use for bore flow rate testing. The bores need to be tested to ascertain they can sustain a flow rate that the villagers will likely to be pumping at. Hence this pump will be able to do that as well as pump at a much higher rate should we need to do more serious draw down testing at some locations to test aquifer flow capacities. The Hammerhead Pro® pump is a robust air driven pump for 100 mm or more bores and can accommodate sandy waters making it a good selection for the type of well studies we need to do.
TPS Pty Ltd of Australia , http://www.tps.com.au/ have donated a field water quality meter to allow testing of the bore water for salinity and pH on site. This will enable us to determine on site if there is a problem with these parameters in the water we are drilling for. The villagers tell Adra that salinity is a common problem around here. The meter is a AQUACPA® meter with calibration solutions.

Started Water Well Drilling

2008-12-20T06:11:00.000-08:00

This week we made some good progress on the project. The drill rig arrived on Monday and started drilling Monday after noon. We had made a plan to drill 2 of the 22 bores before Christmas. The reason for this was that the site survey that had been done indicated the depth to the water table at each location. The average depth was 17 m according to this water diviner. Some were only 6 m and some were 30 meters and even one at 55 m. The drillers had had some experience in a nearby region and there they had said they had to go over 100 m deep to get water. This was causing us concern as if we had to drill to similar depths our budget would be blown in the first 6 bores and the villagers would not be happy with us.
The first well called for a depth of 22 m. We saw moist sand start to come up at 16 m. At 22 m there sand was still moist but very little water, we continued to 24 m deep assuming the 22 m depth was to the top of the water table. This was a little better but the driller was shaking his head that there was still no real water. By then it was late and they said let’s stop and see where the water table ends up at by the time we come back in the morning. The next morning using the new Dip meter kindly donated by Heron Instruments (www.heroninstruments.com) and a big bailer donated by Biolab (www.biolab.com.au), we made some level measurements. The water level had risen back all the way up to 7.3 m. We did some bail down tests to try to estimate recovery rates, but being an uncased hole it was difficult for the dip meter probe to not get covered in a slurry and start sounding off. The water flow rate still looked low however, so we decided to drill to 33 m. At around 28 m the materials coming out of the hole were now a real slurry showing it was getting quite wet down there. The driller would purge the hole completely every now and again with the compressor and a lot of water would fly out of the hole. We had a large crowd of spectators lined up outside the exclusion taped zone the drillers had put up. These were the local villagers hoping we would find water there for them to start using. When water would fly out of the hole they would laugh and jostle each other around with big smiles. The driller foreman started to dance a little jig too. At 33 m we stopped and did more drawdown tests and the water level meter showed there was a good amount of recharge coming into the well. Much more than what a villager on a hand pump could pump out so we were happy we had made the right call to drill deeper than the 22-24 m original target depth. The drillers then cased the hole by inserting 5” PVC casing and screen from the bottom to the top. Once the PVC was fully in, they filled the annulus between the bore ID and the PVC OD with fine gravel for the gravel pack then a cement plug on top of that up to the surface to prevent any surface water from running down the side of the PVC and contaminating the groundwater from the formation. The top was finished off with a 8” steel casing about 1.2 m long inserted around the PVC casing. We asked them to leave 400 mm of the steel casing sticking up above the ground, ready for us to build a concrete slab around it and mount the hand pump on top of that. Since we were not going to do the slab before Christmas, the drillers said what they normally do is weld on a plate on top of the 8” casing. This prevents children who think they are playing from coming and throwing rocks down the PVC and destroying the well.
The next day while the drillers were packing up and moving to the next site we had to drive into Morogoro to get the missing items for the house so that could be finished up ready for us to move into as we were still in this little hotel room which is getting uncomfortable as there is no where to spread our affairs out. The target depth at this second site was 15 m. It was in the same village as the first well, Ukwamani, but about 1 km (0.6 m) away. The drillers sent a text at noon saying they were at 15 m and the cuttings were dry, what do they do? We sent them to 24 m hoping it was the same situation as the first well. Later that afternoon they sent a text saying a small amount of water was flowing in at 16 m, but at 24 m it was hard rock that appeared unfractured. They were going to stop for the night and see where the water level would rise up to overnight. The next morning the water level had come up to 6.25 m from the surface. The driller was saying this was then the same water table as the first well. The flow rate into the well was still low so we decided to drill to 30 m to see if we could get into fractured rock as we had the day before. No such luck. At 30 m, still hard rock and no rock fractures were coming out of the bore only small sand like ground up rock particles. We stopped going deeper and they blew all the water and slurry out of the hole. We then did a remeasure of the water flow rate into the well by following the rising water level in the bore. It was the same as previous which showed that no water was coming in from these deeper zones but from that 16 m zone only. We calculated the rate to be about 200 liters per hour. The village women carry 20 liter buckets so that is 10 buckets an hour they could pump from this bore. I asked the driller if he thought the people could pump 10 buckets per hour. He started chuckling and replied with that these woman use the time at the well site as socialising. They pump a few strokes then stop to chat, then pump a few more strokes and so on, so no they would not be filling 10 buckets an hour. So taking that with a grain of salt, we decided to stop for this well and come back after Christmas to finish off developing and installing the PVC and steel top outer casing. The drillers packed up and late that afternoon caught busses out to their respective home towns for Christmas.
The next day with Jacob we went out to the list sites that we had not seen as yet and made notes about them as to their accessibility for the drill rig, or if any of the site markers the water diviner had placed were too close to each other to make it not worth putting in all wells at those locations. We also looked at the results of the drilling of the two wells and concluded that we would have to add an extra 8 m of depth on average to every bore we planned to drill to be more confident we would strike water and have a deep enough hole to fully insert the intake of pump drop tubes under several meters of water. We wanted to then see how this would affect the drilling budget. Jacob was also getting carpenters, masons and electricians into connect up the items we had bought in Morogoro to finish off the house. We hope it will be finished this weekend so we can move in when we come back after New Year.
We are off next week to visit the Selous Game Reserve and to Kilwa a coastal town to see some old Arabic ruins and hopefully find a resort or two to hang out in for a few days.

The Move to the Gairo Water Project

2008-12-20T06:07:00.000-08:00

Well what a week. We left Arusha at 7:45 on Tuesday morning 9th Dec, headed for Gairo. We were told it was 8-10 hours away. Our little truck was full to the brim and was weighted down. The first 100 km (60 m) were one little village (township) after another and for every town ship the sprinkle the road with speed bumps and judder bars. Makes driving at any speed impractical as you are always slowing down for these bumps. Some are not signed and some are, so sometimes you realise you are coming up on one all of a sudden and have to hit the brakes. Even then the suspension bottoms out. Thump! So the average speed we could do was about 40 mph. Then there are cops out in some of these towns as they put the speed at 30 kmph (18 mph) in weird places to, it seems catch people out. Someone had said it was near Christmas so the cops would be out enmass. Luckily though we saw many, we didn’t get pulled over. There are no obvious places to stop and eat at, I am sure there are places for locals to stop at but there is not much in the way of food for Mzungu’s. So we stopped for a bottle of coke at one place on the side of the road. You can’t take the bottles away so you have to stay there till you are finished. So no cold drinks in the truck.
The road from Arusha to Gairo is really taking the Arusha to Dar Es Salam road then turning off at a town called Chalinze before you get to Dar and head west on the Dar to Dodoma road. These are the only two sealed long roads in the country we think. Anywhere there are a lot of tourists (Arusha) or government workers (Dodoma and Dar) the roads are sealed, otherwise it is gravel or dirt. Even though it is probably highway one, there are very few cars on it, quite a lot of buses. Most local people do not own a car so buses are the method of travel. Some of these bus drivers are quite reckless. Passing on blind corners at high speed, or pulling back front of you before they have even finished passing you sometimes. Our truck has a digital display to show how many more kms we can go before refilling back up. We found out that there are not many gas stations on the road into Chalinze for the last 100 km and the display was showing we had 18 km left when we reached Chalinze, whew! This town is literally a T intersection and there are buses everywhere at all angles across the road. The local hawkers are out in force with trays and boxes of anything trying to sell to the bus passengers and Mzungu’s in a car are a great target. You have to work your way through the intersection between busses and hawkers with them leaning in towards any window offering their items. We get to a gas station and they are out of petrol, Gulp. The attendant points down the road and we head down there and find another one not far away that did have petrol. Whew again. The guy over fills it and dumps a pile of petrol on the ground.
We head west to Gairo. On the way we have to pass by the largest town in the region, Morogoro. About the same size as Arusha we think. Gairo is this tiny township on the road to Dodoma. From the road you can’t see much just a gas station and a few little African sell all stores(phone cards, water, soaps etc). We get to Gairo 11 hours after starting. It is dark now and naturally there are no street lights so we can’t see jack where to go. We call a the project manager Caleb and he comes to the gas station to lead us to our hotel. Hotel in Africa is a word that has quite different connotations to the western world. First once of the road it is all dirt roads with ditches on the side for water runoff. The hotel is a little 1 storey old plaster building wedged in between other anonymous buildings. It was dark and we are guided around to the back in a fenced off area for security. A girl comes out to greet us and show us the room Caleb had prearranged. It is clean and tidy. The toilet won’t flush, there is no hot water that night. She brings in a bucket of water and points to it and the toilet. In Gairo there is almost no English spoken at all unlike Arusha. No tourists ever come here as there is nothing here for them to do. It is about a town of 30-40,000 and we find out we are the only Mzungu’s here the next day. We get up the next morn and there is hot water in the shower then, which is a shower head next to the toilet bowl, no walls for it or anything. There is no breakfast to be had. We had only bought into the room a few clothes leaving the truck full still as we were planning to take it to the house ADRA had ‘set’ up for us the next day. On the way into Gairo we got a hole in the exhaust and the truck was making a louder than normal noise. Here I am thinking, there is no Mitsubishi dealer in Tanzania and to get an exhaust may involve a drive back to Dar (4-5 hrs) and try to get an exhaust imported from Kenya or South Africa possibly and that would only take 3 months is my guess. Not good. Not happy Jan! Caleb had asked his engineer Jacob to come over at 9am. So we get in the truck with him and he shows us where to drive. We drive to a bus station we think or a bus repair station. Jacob starts talking to some local young guys about the exhaust. They point across the street (dirt road) to where I can see and Oxy Acetylene set out on the street. So we drive over there and Jacob talks to that guy. The guy can weld a patch on for a price. Jacob bargains him down from $8 to $6. So OK he starts. First he finds a bit of wire lying on the ground, then a bit of rustyish painted sheet metal off something else. Cuts it into a square big enough to cover the hole. Then gets down under the car and welds it on with no face mask or eye protection. After he had finished I started the car and it sounded completely normal. I could not feel any leaks around the patch either. So off we went. It is a temporary fix for a few months hopefully but will give us time to get back to Arusha in Jan hopefully.
Then Jacob takes us to the Adra office which is down a rough dirt road packed with more shops along the side selling more phone cards, water, shoes, bags, clothes some fruit, hair dressers, very basic hardware stores. All the while everyone we pass is staring at the Mzungus in the truck driving through their town. People are friendly however, they wave and smile if you do the same to them. The kids come running and waving. The Adra office is a rented 4 room house, no running water, no kitchen, just 4 empty rooms. Our house which has been specially prepared for us is right opposite over the dirt road. Jacob gets the keys and he and the secretary Keja give us a quick tour. It does have 3 bedrooms, again just empty rooms, but it does have a toilet/shower like the hotel, and a kitchen. There is no running water at all in it. Gairo was originally planned as a town of 10,000 people and what infrastructure was put in back in the 70’s was for 10,000 people. Now there are 30-40K completely overwhelming any infrastructure. So no houses are allowed to have water plumbed to them. The water can only begotten from public taps (water points) set about every 500 m along the street. The house was meant to be supplied with a bed and mattress, table and chairs, water, oven, fridge, mosquito nets. None of this is there (some we knew about from last week and so Musa from VSA had said he would bring some of it down in his Hilux truck this next week)and so we can’t move in. And to get it ready was no small matter, some extensive plumbing is required. On a humerous note, Jacob had applied to the area water commissioner to get an exemption and be allowed to run water into this house because the Mzungu’s are coming soon! And though it had taken a while due to the bureaucracy, he had gotten the exemption through. The local commissioner had been stalling and stalling but Caleb and Jacob had taken it to the regional commissioner saying the experts from overseas were coming to help the people in the local villages with their water supply and hence they needed this house plumbed with water to make them comfortable to stay here. He had agreed and directed the local commissioner to grant the permit. We are learning African politics is a very delicate thing. So now they are having to dig up 300 m of dirt road thru peoples yards (if you can call a dirt strip between one mud brick house and another a yard) to tie a poly line into a main line to a water point and bring water to this house. Today there were two young girls out with hoes digging this 8 deep x 8 inch wide trench through the red dirt.
Jacob is changing out the Asian toilet to a English toilet bowl too. But we can’t move in till the house is ready. Jacob can’t do the plumbing till he gets cash from Caleb to go buy the necessary fittings. We let Max know back at Adra in Arusha that the house is a long way from ready as we had been told it was. So we are stuck at this little hotel, jammed in with no room to spread anything out. Our excess items we off loaded into one of the empty rooms in the Adra office till the house is ready. Our enthusiasm waned considerably early this week. Poor Ramona was way out of her comfort zone. She likes to be organised and there is no way anything can be organised at the moment. Quite frustrating to say the least.
There is another short term volunteer Ben from Melbourne who came to ADRA under his own steam and we sort of nabbed him to come and help us on this Gairo project for Jan and Feb . He is part way through an Env science degree and is an eager beaver to get into some water well work. He is short of funds as he is finding out Africa is not cheap for non locals. So he is going to stay in our house (when it is ready) too. He too is at the hotel at the moment. Luckily the hotel for his room is only $10 per night and meals are about $2 per person at night. Beer s $1.50 a stubbie.
Since there are no Mzungu’s in Gairo there is only local food available. The local people eat ground up maize as a paste (called Ogali) with their fingers and a few vegetables like spinach, or carrots. Not much else. So this means for westerners this is a food deficient town. I asked Keja where to buy a snickers bar yesterday showing her one. She looked at it and mispronounced the name and said she had never seen one before, and what was it? There is no bread, no jam, no cereal, no canned fruit or veges of any type, no candy, hardly any juice, no potatoes, apples or other fruit other than bananas, pine apples and mangoes. So on day 2 we had to drive back to Morogoro to fill the truck up with western food to last us a week or more. Ben came too. That was $200 of items from a small corner store which was the only real grocery store in Morogoro. The Indian owners were happy with us. Then we had to get basics for the house like 3 plates, KFS, pots, toaster, dish rack, chopping board, electric kettle (to make hot bathing water), can opener, candles and matches for when the power goes out, cleaners and such. This is going beyond what a volunteer is meant to do but anything to make this place more livable was our thought.
Today Friday was Caleb’s meeting with the regional politicians. It was to announce the kick off of a HIV/Aids education program that Adra is also doing down here. It is a big project so a big deal for this region. They had invited a lot (about 40) of community leaders to this meeting to inform them of this program and the big cheese regional commissioner was there to do the official kick off. He has his entourage of staff as well so it was a big deal meeting. It was held in a school hall. Caleb and the politicians sat on a table on the stage and the community people say in rows of chairs on the main floor. We were asked to sit in the front row. Ben, Ramona and myself. Jacob sat with us to translate for us. This was true Africa style meeting. No western influences here at all. When the regional commissioner walked in in his flash suit the community leaders started chanting in Swahili, it might have been his name or the name of the president or such we could not tell. They have regions here like states, then districts like counties then wards like individual villages. So there was the regional commissioner (a appointed position not an elected position), the district commissioner, the ward chairman and secretary, the local police chief from Gairo and a few others we are not sure who. Caleb got up and gave a speech and started off telling the community about Adra and its goals, then who was on the Adra team here in Gairo from Keja the secretary to his own role and then he points at us and introduces Ben from Australia as a expert who has come to help the people out to get their water, then he moves on to Ramona saying some thing similar, we could hear him say America, Australia in his speech. Then he moves on to me and says a bunch more. Jacob was translating by them. Caleb was saying the Mzungus have come to save the project, by doing some of the work ourselves now like pump testing and pump installations we were saving money and saving the project. That we were experts and the community needed to treat us as special as we were here to help them out. We had to stand while they clapped for us. Caleb later said after the dignitaries’ were gone the community leaders were coming up to him saying send the Mzungus out to our ward please. Some women had traditional style clothes on or the more senior women had pretty outfits on. I must admit I started off the meeting with scepticism about these big politicians as you hear so much about the corruption in politics, but this guy was very earnest in his talk. He spoke about the problem aids was for his region and how it was spreading and they as community leaders were tasked with getting the education around to try to control this epidemic. He spoke of Adra and how grateful the region was that outside donors we coming to help them, but please for Adra to make sure that the money as put to the correct use and not siphoned off as some unscrupulous groups do. Needless to say he got rounds of claps too. He had each of the 40 leaders stand up and say their name and what they do in the community which was a nice touch to make the people feel more personal I think.
With Jacob we drove around in our truck to some of the sites we are to drill at and install water pumps. He said lets go to the furtherest one first so you can see what the drillers will have to face when they get here. The drillers were due in a couple of days. So we dove about 12 km out through the scrub on a dirt trail up hill and down dale, through washed out gullies, along sand tracks, through house back yards. Kind of fun really to do some off road driving. It is hot so it is all dry at the moment so no mud to get stuck in. Along the way Jacob was telling us about the area. He pointed out that the villagers use local wood to cook their meals every day. These are people that have rarely seen a car, probably have never been more than 10 m from their home. The education level is quite low. There is constant cutting of braches and trees to get firewood. An absolute disaster in the making. The place will turn into a desert. But what else can they do. They do not deal in cash, so they can’t go to town (even if they could do that) to buy a gas bottle for a stove. The govt does not run electricity out to their villages.
Saturday. There is a small rock mountain out the back of Gairo and we had the day to spare so we put on our boots and went and climbed to the top of it. It has two peaks really the front and back peak. We didn't have time to do both. It afforded a good view of the Gairo town and plains below way off into the distance. We could see other similar rock outcrops around too, which we may go explore one day if we get time.
Today Sun 14th we met with the driller foreman who had come in a few days late. The rig is to arrive tomorrow. We took him on a drive back out to the same sites and a few more so he could access the route to get their big 20 ton truck out to these sites. SO another 4 hours of driving around the dirt tracks, it had rained this afternoon so there were some wet roads and streams to cross this time. Quite fun this type of driving. On the way back on the dirt road there were some pot holes and there was a family out there scooping water out of the pot holes and putting it into buckets to take to their house. This grey dirty water was that important to them. Jacob said they don’t even boil it before drinking it. The Adra training group try to inform the people about the importance of boiling it at least but trying to change long habits is very difficult and most of the time unsuccessful. However boiling the water would take more cutting down of more trees as well. So we have to be careful in the aims of the project as to fix one problem could well be making another one. It takes so long for trees to grow back so this is not a sustainable practise. We have seen no forestry plots to grow trees at all so far.

Road Trip to Babati

2008-12-07T10:55:00.000-08:00

We decided to go out west for a few days to another town called Babati where there is a similar project being undertaken but in a bigger way than our Gairo project. We thought by watching what they were doing we would get some good information to take down for our project in Gairo. We took Peter, a local person from ADRA, who has been helping us with various projects at ADRA. Peter has also been teaching us Swahili. In Babati they are installing new wells and refurbishing old wells that are no longer being used for a variety of reasons, including a missing pump, a broken pump, a broken concrete slab or no water there anymore. In Gairo we are to install new wells only as there are no other older ones there. We drove through Arusha and stopped off at Musa’s office and told him we were heading out there. He said, “ you are not taking your truck on that road are you?” The road is very bad. But we went anyway. Babati is about 200 km (120 miles) west of Arusah. The first 120 km are also on the way to the big game parks, so the roads are nicely sealed. However once past the game parks and tourists area, there is no longer “an international need” to go there, so the tarmac disappears and it is a gravel and dirt road. It looks smooth from a distance, but the corrugations and potholes make it a real bone shaker. About 20 km/hr was all we could do in many places. It is wide enough for 2 lanes but one drives anywhere to find the smoothest path. Off to the right for a few 100 meters, then switch over to the left for the next few 100 meters, then off the road on the shoulder for a bit more. There are a few buses coming through all the time and they just fly by bouncing around. Every now and then we came across one fixing a puncture or broken axel possibly. We could also see some trucks driving on a parallel-ish dirt path off to the right in the scrub. I asked Peter what that was and he said we should not drive there because it was single lane, and we couldn’t see far enough though the scrub plus the trucks drive fast there. But after about another 30 mins of unending shaking Peter said, “OK, go to the dirt road”. It was such a relief, we could get up to about 40 km/hr in places! In other places, we almost came to a stop to cross some washed out crevice. But it was a lot faster. The track passed through the back of houses that were on the official road side. I couldn’t tell sometimes if we were on a dirt road or driving through some ones yard. The locals would stare at our truck driving along this path. Luckily we didn’t meet many big trucks on this dirt path and we got to Babati just on dusk, having taken about 4 hours to drive the 200 km.
The next day the project leader there and a few others piled us into their Landcruiser and we headed out to the rural villages where the work was being done. She said our little truck may not handle these roads too well. We soon found out why very quickly! They are no roads, only dirt tracks through the scrub and trees that the locals use. No government assistance to make any roads for the people at all. It was dry so it was not too bad, but can’t imagine what would happen when it is wet. The first site we visited was a new well site being drilled. To get a picture of where these are installed, don’t think of a well being installed on a street corner or such but picture an area with rolling hills, no fences anywhere and a well just drilled at some location in a field. (The well sites had previously been sited by a water diviner.)
This location was on the side of a hill. The drillers were a contracting company from Arusha. They were using an older style rig that used percussion or cable tool method. This rig repetitively lifts and drops a weight onto a drill bit down the hole. The bit crushes the rock down to sand like particles. Then every 10 mins of so, they pull the weight and bit out of the hole, lower down a long steel bailer to surge up and down, partially filling it with the newly crushed sand. Then they lift that out and tip it upside down using the winch to dump its contents on the ground. They do this a few times then go back to drilling again. The method is slow compared to other drilling methods but it is lower cost and does not require large air compressors and such. They were down about 30 m deep when we arrived.
The drillers stay on site. They put up a small tent with a “bed” covered by a mosquito net and cook their meals over an open fire. At this time of year it is quite warm but not too hot.
We stayed there about 2 hours to watch their operation. That drilling method was new to us (because it’s not often used in Australia anymore)but the other office staff had seen it all before so they were doing other activities while we watched.
Next we were taken over to a natural spring that had a small flow of coming water from it. It was in some trees on the side of a hill just up from the bottom of the gulley. There was a local woman there getting water in some buckets to take back up the hill to her house, but we had no idea how far she lived from there. It could have been several kilometres away and she was carrying the water. The water out of the spring was clean it seemed but when it ran into a little pool where the buckets were being filled from, it got a bit cloudy. The woman was asked if the water was boiled before it was drank. She said some do and some don’t.
An old abandoned site was the next visit. This was a small (2 m diameter) domed slab that used to have a pump on it, but the pump was gone and a rock covered the well opening. We met the village executive officer at that site. It seems every village has a person with this title and they look after the affairs of the village, but we are still finding out more about how the management of these villages is set up. On the way back to the office in Babati again, we stopped for a coke (this was lunch!) then stopped at a working water well. This was in a more conventional village with a main street and a few shops and houses. There were a number of adults and children at this well filling up buckets with water from the hand pump. They would then put them on their head and walk back to their homes. The field engineer with us noticed the children were doing short strokes on the pump (almost a dance) so he showed them how to long slow strokes with the pump and get more water.
At night we stayed in a local “hotel” that was inexpensive and nice and clean. They didn’t really have a menu so we asked for chicken and rice with vegetables. The roast chicken came out first but none of the pieces on the plate resembled any chicken we had ever seen before. The chickens here seem to have a lean life as there was no meat on the bones! There was a kitty hanging around and he liked us as we shared this “chicken” with him!
The next day we went back out to the abandoned site as it was to be refurbished that day. So we decided to spend an extra day to help and watch them build a new pump slab and install a pump. There was a local masonry technician there that day to do the concrete works. When we got to site, somehow over night the locals had arranged to drop off a couple of truck loads of sand and some biggish rocks. A number of the locals were there with hammers, pick, axes and attacking these big rocks breaking them down into little pebbles to use in the concrete. There was no other source of gravel around. The first thing was break up the old slab and remove it which didn’t take too long as it looked like little effort had been spent on it in the first place. Then over the rest of the day a new slab was constructed. We didn’t quite get finished so the technician was going back the next day to do the final plastering and install the pump. There is quite a bit to do to make one of these slabs as we learned. We have to think about channelling the spilled water off in the right direction otherwise it gets all muddy around the area and the mud gets tramped back onto the slab. The top of the slab has to be high enough to be above any natural running water the rains cause. There also needs to be a fence around the water source to keep livestock out and to keep kids from using it as a playground.
That night back in Babati, it rained hard. We both woke up during the night and wondered what the road was going to be like in the morning for the drive back to Arusha! It was still very rough and slow but not a mud pool like we thought it might be in places. The side road we had used on the way out, was no longer driveable, as most of it was covered in water. We got stopped by police check points twice on the way back . One said we had to pay a fine for not having a certified copy of the ownership papers with us. We tried to explain we did not know it had to be a certified copy. Then he just waved us on. We were very glad we had Peter with us. (Later in the week we asked Musa bout this and he said it didn’t have to be a certified copy.) Back in Arusha it had also rained and some of the back dirt streets were now potholes full of water.Overall it was a good learning trip for us.

Trying to Do Business in Arusha

2008-12-06T11:40:00.000-08:00

One day we went to buy 4 small fittings to extend some plumbing water lines to raise a water tank 2 m. We wanted to gt more pressure at the tap outlets. These were PVC fittings that would take about 1 hour to go buy in Australia including Melbourne traffic. The first obstacle we have over here is we do not speak the language let alone any technical terms. Most people in Tanzania do speak some English at least; otherwise, it would be very difficult to find our way around. We called the shop and through several further calls managed to get the message across that we wanted to come and visit their shop for these parts. The shop is a national company with multiple offices, but they have no email address, no webpage and they do not answer the land line, only a cell phone. The woman was doing her best but we could not understand her too well. Basically she was saying as there are no street names she could not tell us where they were other than in the industrial area. (And we did not know where that was either.) She said come with your driver as she would tell him. We have no driver!! I said I would call her again when we got into the town centre. We did this but we just could not understand her instructions and spent another 45 mins driving around. Finally I asked if she could meet us at the big grocery store, so she did. We then followed her in our truck to her shop. Turns out it is not far off the main street and is a 5 min drive from the town centre. But with no street signs how do you describe your location to someone? Once there I showed her a picture of the fittings we wanted having printed them off a website from a google search the night before. She did not have these in stock but would order them from Dar Es Salam overnight. Now this is about 2 hours later from when we arrived in town.
For the next set of brass hose fittings: The day before, I called a UK guy living here who I hoped would know where to get these parts. He suggested two places on the main street, that we already knew of, and said there were no other industrial type businesses around that would sell fittings. The PVC sales person had also suggested another hardware store on the main street as well. By now we are coming to understand that all the technical items are to be sourced from a short section of the main street of town and if they don’t have them, they are not to be found in Arusha. We drove back to the main street and it is now 1 pm’ish, so all the hardware type stores are closed for the lunch break. They close it seems for about 2 hours. So we went and had lunch too. After lunch back to the hardware stores, there are about 6 of them virtually in a row. I showed them the picture of a ¾” brass hose barb and they just shake their heads like they have never seen one before that big. A couple bought out a ¼” hose barb saying that was all they had. (These are used on compressors which they do carry). So having exhausted all those shops, we drive pass our last hope (which are the two shops the UK guy had mentioned to us.) Still closed for lunch and it is about 3 pm. So we drive back to ADRA. The result of the day was from 11 am to 3:30 we had run around after $10 worth of common fittings and none to be had.
The hardware stores are quite different too. They almost all are a single shop front with a small entrance area about 2 m x 2 m, then a counter with a bunch of bars rising from it up to the ceiling and the sales staff behind the bars. The entrance area has basic items on display like hammers, wrenches, maybe a compressor or a generator. But anything you want, you have to ask for and they tell you if they have it or not. If they do, they go to the back to get it. The back is very crammed and it is a testament to their memory I guess to know what is back there. They do stock common things that may be used on a construction site but anything else, Samehani. (Sorry). There is just no way to browse to see what they have or what else they may have that could do the job as well.
Then begins the problem of finding out who then has parts in another city (which means Dar Es Salam in Tanzania, a 10 hr drive, or Nairobi over the border, a 5 hr drive, in Kenya). Many streets have no names so there are no physical addresses, many of the phone lines have been stolen or neglected so most people are on mobile phones. This means they are not in the phone book. There is no such thing as yellow pages. Most do not have internet so there are no websites to search, let alone find a list of products a company may offer. Any website that does come up for a supplier in Tanzania is normally another search engine site listing Indian or Chinese sites that say they can sell to Tanzania or Thailand etc. Business marketing it seems is all word of mouth only. No one apart from the bigger tourist hotels take credit cards, so it is a cash only based system. There is 20% VAT added to the cost of an item or service too. But you often don’t get a receipt so it makes one wonder about where the VAT is going.
If I do find parts in one of these other cities, I have yet to figure out how to actually pay for them so they will send them. Them I am told if I get them in 2-10 days I would be lucky as I might not get them at all unless I were to use a professional courier service.
10 days later, still no sign of the PVC fittings so I cancelled them and succumbed to the convention used here which is to use galvanised steel pipe and a plumber out on site to manually thread the pipe as needed. But we got the job finished and raised the water tank 2 meters and indeed did get more pressure out the taps.

We Have Mobility

2008-11-17T11:02:00.000-08:00

On Friday this week we picked up the vehicle we had purchased. The dealer was kind enough to let us take it while we were waiting for the wired funds to come through. It was nice to drive home and not have to take the daladala van for once. It is a Mitsubishi Pajero GDI which is a smaller engine and shorter version of the Pajeros I knew in Australia. It is a 5 door vehicle, automatic, with 2H, 4H and 4L wheel drive with diff lock. Ramona christened her “Patty Pajero". Driving around brings another set of differences to what we are used to. There are a lot of people walking along the road all the time it seems so you have to watch out for them a lot more. The daladala vans seem to have their own rules so you have to watch them too. When you park in town a person comes around and puts a little ticket under your wiper. This lets you park there for TzS 200 for an hour. (About $0.20 US). When you go to leave is when you pay them as they come up to your vehicle asking for the payment, ie no parking meters are used. So we’ll have to learn to carry more small change around with us from now on. There are a lot of speed bumps are along the road to keep speed down and some are quite abrupt! They generally have pedestrian crossings on top of them, though on most, the white stripes are worn off hence you have to look carefully for pedestrians. (They are known as zebras here.)The speed limit between USA river 20 km east of Arusha and Arusha is 50 kph with sections at 30 kph. Other volunteers tell us there are speed traps all along the road.

Started Working on the Water Project

2008-11-17T10:32:00.000-08:00

This past week we settled down into work more. We started off with a meeting with Max and some project managers who are involved in the water project at Gairo. The project aims to supply water points in 7 villages affecting about 2000 households. These households on average at the moment have only 6 litres of water per person per day and the people have to walk/travel 5 km for this every day. The project goals are to install 22 hand operated water pumps that will enable these households to access 25 litres per day per person and within a maximum walking distance of 500 m. Max had a draft of a request for quotes to be sent out to various drilling companies to ascertain their interest and ability to perform the required drilling. We took a copy of it and started modifying it somewhat based on our experience from our previous work in Australia. Max also gave us a report from a local but USA born guy, Larry, who has a company that does underground water searches. On Tuesday we had a meeting with Larry at a local hotel and spent about 1.5 hours talking to him about this project and how to work with drillers here. It was a very good meeting. On Wed we finalised the RFQ with Max and sent it out on Thursday. On Friday morning we met with two of the drillers after they had read the RFQ and had questions. One of them was a UK guy who has lived here for many years. He too had a lot of good advice for us on local conditions and what we would need to do to get the work done properly. On Saturday I sent out to the drillers some more information that Larry had put in his reports, to enable the drillers to access the work load more accurately.
While in town on Friday we bought some basic tools that we need on a current job at ADRA and expect to have a need for the Gairo project when we get there. We got them from a little store on a back street figuring they would be priced more for the locals there rather than the stores on the main street of town. It is funny how things are still priced as 5000 schillings or 10,000 schillings and nothing in between. Maybe as we are Mzungu.
At the campus we have a couple of projects on the go too. One involved taking down (well more of a controlled fall!) some 10 m poles and moving them up to the front by the main road where they are to be resurrected with some vertical banners on them promoting the campus with the baby home, the cottages and furniture operations. We are waiting on quotes for getting the banners made at the moment. The second project is to try to improve the water pressure into the cottages. The first method is to see if we can raise the height of the water tank. To do this first we have to test however if the water supply will have enough pressure to fill the tank at an extra 2 m of height. Now that we have the tools we will test this in the coming week.
While I was up the ladder trying to disconnect the water line into the tank, Ramona was helping one of the volunteers from the baby home who was working on a flyer. We had the software she needed luckily so she was using my computer with Ramona’s help.

Mobile Internet

2008-11-16T11:33:00.000-08:00

In anticipation of going to Gairo for the drilling and pump installations, we bought a USB modem for the computers. This connects to the phone company cell towers directly so you don’t have to go through anyone else’s ISP. We had a bit if trouble connecting it up as the phone company didn’t give instructions how to set up their network for it. But we got it going eventually after a visit to their office in Arusha again. It is advertised with a speed of 7.2 mbps which would be very fast, but we only are getting about 50 kbps from it. Slow but some connection is better than no connection we figured. The phone companies have their own power supplies so when the electricity goes off we will be able to use this modem and still connect to the internet. (But only while our laptops run on internal battery power).

Meru Game Park Lodge

2008-11-09T10:54:00.000-08:00

Yesterday we were taken by Max and his wife to a small lodge and park 5 km or so east of ADRA. The park is not far from the Kilimanjaro airport hence it is a place where tourists often stay on the beginning or end of their safari. The lodge is located within 33 acres of mature, well manicured gardens bounded on one side by the Usa River and on the other by the Animal Sanctuary. There is a viewing area to sit and watch the animals come up at feeding time. A keeper brings out food for the animals and birds there. So it is quite a good little show.
On view are zebras, ostriches, eland, water buffalo, a range of monkeys playing in trees and other large birds. The Saddle-bill stork was particularly interesting being so big about 1.2 m (4 ft) tall and with a bright coloured head.

Arrived at ADRA

2008-11-09T06:19:00.000-08:00

ADRA (Adventist Development and Relief Agency, http://www.adratz.org/) is the sponsoring partner organisation VSA has arranged for us to work with while in Africa. We arrived at the ADRA campus on Monday afternoon. It is a campus surrounded by a high wall for security purposes and with 24 hour security. We had great expectations of getting on the internet once here as they have a large wide area wireless ADSL network across the campus. The first day, we got on the internet for about 10 mins then it froze. We find out is it a general power outage. These are common it seems across the country as there is not the generation capacity to meet demand. I read in the paper that it was costing the Tanzanian government $2M a day for these power outages and lost productivity! ADRA have back up generators for the campus, however we found out their UPS’ back up battery had failed and with any power fluctuations from the generator, the UPS would disconnect but not reconnect. There is a Danish education school next door and they have a computer lab which Max’s wife said we could use. We went up there and it was OK but painfully slow, would freeze often. When we came back after dark the power was back on so the internet was up. So good to get connected again as our Australian affairs are backing up.
Thursday we caught a daladala into town to buy a replacement battery for the UPS, to look at a vehicle to possibly purchase and get groceries from the Shoprite store. The power was off most of the day in Usa and in Arusha we learned and the generator was on we returned. We replaced the battery and had webmail on internet that night.
There is a baby home on the ADRA campus run by Davona, Max’s wife, plus a set of cottages or roundels for accommodation for tourists or guests. One has an open plan kitchen dining area with TV with a satellite connection with channels like CNN, BBC news etc. The roundels are split down the middle making a separate accommodation on each side. (We had breakfast one morning at the same time CNN was on & heard USA president-elect Obama’s “acceptance” speech. Ramona did get to vote absentee before we left Melbourne so she was glad about that.) There is also a laundry on the other side of the dining roundel with washer and dryer. Plus a clothes line outside which we will mostly use I’m sure. We’ll be sharing the kitchen with any others (tourists, guests). All in all a good setup. We changed our roundel room around a bit to add a big table to set the computers, printer, phone charges up on etc, to make a good work station.

Also on the campus there is a furniture making section. They make nice wooden furniture for sale to various businesses and organisations. They make just about any piece it seems. Cupboards, dressers, beds, tables etc. Part of Ramona's project is to try and help further market the roundels and this furniture section to see if we can increase sales of these items for ADRA.

On his return from Nairobi last week, we met the Tanzanian ADRA director, Max. Max is from the USA but lived in Africa for the last 25 years and has worked with ADRA for quite a few years. He spoke to us about his plans and what we can get involved in. It was good to hear. We ended up chatting to him for about 2 hours about his projects. He is quite humorous, very friendly, and has some big plans, some good engineering ones too from mini hydro power generation, to water bore drilling and water supply to water deficient villages. Other plans he has are on human care, like aids prevention & education, coordinating the accounting side of the various orphanages around and orphan supplemental care. He has two big water projects on the go, one is for about 12 water wells and the other is 120 water wells. Both encompass other aspects like hygiene and education so the people get to use the water properly and not get sick at times. Another guy (from the USA), now coordinating a program in Zambia, is here at the moment as one of Max’s water projects is shared with him. He was all excited about VSA, he said “you mean I can get experienced people for almost free?” This discussion was a good beginning focus for us.

Mt Meru

2008-11-09T00:56:00.000-08:00

Just north of Arusha a few miles is Mt Meru. It is 4,565 m (15,000 ft) high and the 5th highest mountain in Africa. An impressive old volcano that last erupted a long time ago. The lower slopes are covered in forests and fruit plantations now days. The mountain causes a large rain shadow around the region which is why Arusha is where it is. The lands around are quite fertile compared to areas further away which are desert effectively. The water supply for Arusha and surrounds comes from the catchment off Mt Meru. The mountain is quite pretty to see though it is often hidden clouds. The short wet season started this week and Mt Meru had a light dusting of snow on the top we could see one day.
Mt Kilimanjaro (19,500 ft) is about 40+ miles to the east. You can’t see it from Arusha though.
People who want to climb Mt Kilimanjaro often climb Mt Meru first to get some acclimatisation experience. It is a 4 day trek, 2 up and 2 down, staying in lodges for 3 nights. Some good animal wild life lives on the mountain like elephants, giraffes, monkeys etc.

Arriving in Arusha, Tanzania

2008-11-08T02:24:00.000-08:00

The first part of the flight to TZ was to Johannesburg in SA where we had to spend a night. You don’t hear much good about Jo’burg so we were a bit nervous about leaving the airport. The hotel that VSA had booked for us was a shuttle ride away and the instructions said to leave the airport and go to lane 4 to catch the shuttle. Getting thru the airport was pretty simple. Customs doesn’t really exist. Once outside though there was a lot of construction going on and there was no lane 4. We asked a security guy where to catch the shuttle and he led us to a different place where we found it. I had expected that once outside the airport we would get inundated by taxi drivers, hawkers of all sorts, but there was none of that at all. It was quite modern and simple to get around. The Hotel was a 10 min ride away, and a huge room, all quite new. It was on a complex with several other Hotels, a small shopping centre with a food court. The next day we went back to the airport and had a couple of hours to wander around. This time it was in the departures side so there were a lot of modern shops to look at etc. We left with quite a good impression of the Jo’burg airport.
From there we flew to Nairobi in Kenya for a 1 hour layover. The plane landed several 100 meters away from the building so we all just walked off the plane across the tarmac. When we got inside Ramona remembered she had left a new top on the seat in the plane. After a bit of run around we went to the gate where we were boarding next and explained what had happened. She made a call to someone and said the top would be retrieved and given to us when we on the next air plane for Kilimanjaro airport. I was not holding out too much hope. But sure enough they handed it to us when in the plane. The plane this time was a little 30 seater. It is an hour flight to Kilimanjaro airport. We got there, went right through immigration and picked up our bags that all arrived. We are grateful it all went so smoothly. Musa from VSA Tanzania met us there after baggage pick up. It was 7 pm and quite dark. The sun sets at about 6:40ish at the moment. May get to 7 pm at the longest day of the year. It gets light at 6 am too. Musa was raised in Arusha so he knows the town very well and a lot of locals it seems. He is always saying something to someone in the streets. He has a Toyota Hi Lux pickup truck and runs us around in that. He is a nice guy and speaks perfect English which makes it easy. His job for the first 4-5 days is to give us an orientation to VSA Tanzania, to the town Arusha, where to find a hospital, a doctor, local buses, national buses, how to use local transport that is very confusing to non local language speakers. Basically a bunch of minivans (called daladala from Dollar Dollar Musa tells us) running around with a person riding shot gun to watch out for passengers. They sort of have fixed routes to go and the vans are colour coded to identify their routes but they run on no time table, just whenever. We hear no bus is ever full in Africa. Can always get more in!!!
The people here are very polite, quite shy and soft spoken. It is very obvious we are not from these here parts as the locals stare at us often. Luckily in Arusha there are tons of Europeans, either working here or tourists or volunteers from different organisations, so we don’t attract too much attention. Musa and others advise us not to walk around after about 8:30 pm and even then only in certain parts of town. Arusha like any town has its good and bad areas. When you walk down the street and say Jambo to a local they always reply back with a smile and say other words we don’t yet understand. Sometimes they laugh at that. They are all very helpful when we ask them how to say something in Swahili. The vowels are similar to Maori so that makes it easier for me to say at least. Ramona struggles a bit but gets there eventually.
The main part of Arusha town is a rectangle bounded by 4 roads. About 2 miles long and a mile wide so it is quite easy to get around. Outside of this rectangle is mainly suburbs or bordering on to other little towns we think, but as yet have not seen that much. In the rectangle is all the main shopping, business areas, hotels, the central produce market. This is quite busy with a lot of people in it, a lot of the locals get their vegetables, meats, spices etc from here. Full on haggling on every price, Musa has explained how this works to us. Only the main streets are paved and all the rest are dirt which is quite dusty as it has not rained here for several months. Musa showed us where the post offices are, hardware stores (no Bunnings nor Home Depot though!), "grocery" stores, a couple of auto yards (there are not many here actually it seems). We will probably have to get a vehicle here soon due to our next locations being out of Arusha. He points to an area and says you can park here and there, but not in those 10 parks there as the car might get vandalised there. They all look the same to us.
VSA put us up in ½ of a house for the first 5 nights not far from the town clock which is the centre point of town. This made it easy for us to get out and walk around. It is one of the better parts of town with a dozen or so good restaurants not far away, nice hotels scattered along the road, lots of flowering trees out at the moment like Jacarandas, Bougainvillea. In this house we had a bedroom and bathroom then shared the lounge & kitchen with the people in the other bedroom. A bit cramped but for 5 days it served a good purpose to be close to the town centre. On Monday the 3rd we moved out to the ADRA site 20 km east of Arusha on the main east west road. A place called Usa (OOSA) River. A very small community in its own right, but it borders on other communities on either side along the highway. There is the Arusha national park up a side road that leads to a game park and safari lodges and hotels. Some other volunteers we met on Sat live out there too and they go for lunch or drinks at these lodges on the weekend some times as they are very nice. You can sit there with a cold Kilimanjaro beer looking at wild animals in the trees they said.
For the first 5 days Ramona and I have walked around after Musa has dropped us off for the day. We had a few meals at the local hotels which was nice, caught up for a few beers with another volunteer we had met in Wellington in July. Bought some groceries and cooked some meals at this house. The prices of local things here are about ½ what we would pay in Australia. Basic food is cheaper still. Cars seem to be more expensive. Petrol is about $1.50 US per liter. There are a lot of juices in the grocery stores. The grocery stores tend to be small like a corner dairy store. There is one larger true super market called Shoprite which is on the edge of the rectangle. It seems to have an wider selection of food, beers and wines and kitchen type hardware & although we didn’t buy any yet, Ramona spotted Hershey syrup there!!
The temperature this week has been in the 30+ deg C (90+F) during the day and falling to about 18-20 deg (65-70 F)at night. This is said to be hot so it seems it may not get much hotter than this in summer. We’ve gotten a little red already from walking around in this sunlight & that’s with sunscreen. We can see internet is going to be a challenge. We first wrote this on MSWord then posted it later when the internet was working. It is easy to get a connection to the internet in Arusha. But then going to use Outlook is tough. It may be better at ADRA as they have a wireless set up for the whole compound. But still not sure if we can use Outlook. The webmail we were using is OK but very slow (pole, pole in Swahili). Too slow to be practical. Yesterday we saw a guy using webmail but his screen was emulating Outlook. He had no idea what he was using but it got us to thinking. Today we went to a local hotel to use their internet and our webmail there came up with a different screen that emulated Outlook which was very cool. I did not know why it did this but Ramona found a option on the webmail sign in page that took it from basic mode to this Outlook emulator. That is much easier and somewhat faster to use. A very good find!! We need to test if any computer will support this or only certain ones. We’ll do some experiments this week.

Generous Donors

2008-10-24T22:37:00.000-07:00

We have been fortunate to have two donors so far donate equipment to the water supply project we are going to work on.
Heron Instruments in Canada (http://www.heroninstruments.com/) have donated a Dipper T water level meter for gauging water depths in ground water bores. They also provided a water level logger kit. This will allow studies of ground water levels to monitor bore production capabilities and see if there are any seasonal level fluctuations of the bore levels that may affect amount of water the bores can yield.

The Enviroequip division (http://www.enviroequip.com/) of Biolab Australia donated a range of basic equipment for taking water samples from bores. Equipment like bailers and foot valves, a fox whistle for simple depth gauging, and some water quality measuring test strips, will enable anyone to take a sample from any bore to enable the water quality to be accessed for suitability standards.

Thanks to these organisations as their equipment will be valuable out in the field to enable the local people do their own bore monitoring.

Going Away Party

2008-10-12T02:24:00.000-07:00

With 3 weeks to go we had a send off get together at the house for our friends. Most were from our company Enviroequip or our triathlon friends (who have mostly traded in their bikes and running shoes for children). It was a good get together to see so many friends in the one place. The BBQ was fired up for a great meal and many laughs. It is nice to have good friends.

Packing Sept 08

2008-09-22T04:54:00.000-07:00

In September we were furiously preparing to leave for 2 years. It is amazing how much there is to arrange before hand. Ramona has been doing all the admin for us such as arranging meetings with property agents, bank account managers, arranging a bookkeeper to do our finances while we are away, setting up an over-all property manager to deal with the various agents, arranging for any and all organisations to email us any correspondence so we can retrieve them in Tanzania.
Ross has been doing more physical projects to get the house ready, doing any repairs, or modifications that will allow our house sitters to easily occupy the house while we are away. Plus arrange a few contactors to do maintenance on other properties. Then learning how to use this site.
Today our house sitters Sarah and Blair arrived from NZ.
Our visas have been approved and sent through so now we have a departure date of 28th October.