Field Trips

Thursday and Friday were spent in meetings...about as exciting as that sounds. All the foreigners who had traveled from the US were hit with fierce jetlag.  My eyes crossed, my head nodded, I may have fallen asleep during a short video clip when they dimmed the lights.  I felt a bit less guilty when our donor representative confessed to almost falling out of her chair at one point when she nodded off. 



Bean pickers

Saturday however, while a long, long day included an afternoon of field trips.  We boarded mini-buses to go out to a small private company started by a couple agriculture university graduates who had put their entrepreneur class to good use.  I admit, I don't quite understand the business model, but our group of 20+ trudged out into the muddy fields (some with better suited shoes than others) to see how production worked and chat with some of the farmer workers.  They were mostly women, barefoot in the mud, hand picking green beans.  The field we went to was run by a young woman as well which was heartening since one of the main aims of our project is to improve women's empowerment. 



Bean pickers

The second field trip was more eco-tourism than project oriented. A sub-set of our group bused out to walk around a "Masai" village to see how they live.  I put that in quotations because traditionally Masai are pastoral and constantly move with their herds.  These Masai were in an established village with only one or two cows per family.  They harvest bananas and coffee, it seems, and we were treated to a coffee preparation demonstration starting with the raw bean and ending with brewed coffee.  Not really what one would like to do every morning, so thank goodness for modern processing.



Shelling and roasting coffee

After that long day we had our group dinner at a fancy restaurant which unfortunately did not have fancy food.  Good thing we weren't terribly hungry.  Last thing I did that evening was clean the mud off my running shoes, knowing that I would have a significant amount of sludge to clean out of the sink once the water slowly drained.

 

 

1st Day in Tanzania

Heritage Cultural Center shops

After eventless flights, arriving in the small Kilimanjaro airport at 1:30a, I finally arrived at my Arusha hotel.  Four hours later I was up to meet my colleague and others who I will be working with at the meetings which will start tomorrow.  They are from African non-profits and UK research universities.  We are in the midst of a long start up process for this project and I am coming on board part way through it so have a lot of catching up to do.



Shanga River House glass blowers

Because the official meeting hasn't started yet, we had the afternoon off - my only time off for the next seven days.  My supervisor who is here, did her trip advisor homework and found some craft centers and a driver so away we went.  Unfortunately I didn't see anything that called to me, but she found some tchotchkes for friends and talked another place (where crafts are made by people with disabilities) into removing and selling her four blue glass pieces from a chandelier.  She can barter like no other. 

This evening will be dinner with a couple ladies from our meeting and then hopefully I will catch up on some sleep in preparation for tomorrow.