Off to project site

Enroute to project site so won't have any wifi or ability to post again until July 18th.  Stay tuned until then when I will upload the blogs I write offline. 

Evolution

We played a team building game today called "Evolution".  Everyone starts as an amoeba and can progressively evolve into a chicken, then a chimpanzee, and finally into a human.  You only evolve if you are the winner of rock-paper-scissors against your own species.  If you win, you move up. If you lose, you move down the scale.  A fun game to meet a few new faces.  

This is Hugh celebrating becoming human. 

Fresh mango

Had fresh mango from a local stand today.  

Uploading posts while I have wifi 

Had a break day and found a nice meal and wifi in a local hotel.  This picture is from the training hike (trek) that we did last week.  We will be repeating the same hike next week once the venturers arrive.  

A map at last

Tuesday's itinerary included visiting the hospital and market in Vwawa.  During our visit to the hospital we found the map below which is the first one we have found which shows Hangomba (upper left), our project village location. 

We filled out the questionnaire with help from the head doctor and then took a tour.  It is a small, but functional hospital good for most injuries except head injuries or heart attacks. Those would need to be transferred another hour to Mbeya or be airplane evacuated to Nairobi.  

We visited the local market which sold all types of fruit, vegetables, and grain.  We then stopped at the district office in hopes of finding a map of Vwawa. We met the District Chairman, equivalent to a governor and several of the heads of health and sanitation.   After a long while, we learned the land manager was out of the office for several hours.  Because we still had other stops to make we asked for an electronic copy to be sent to us and continued on our way.  

Next stop was Songwe airport which is the location for an airlift to Nairobi if we require medivac.  It is a regional airport with daily jets to Dar Es Salaam.  

Our final stop for the day was the Regional hospital in Mbeya.  It has all services available and is one of only 3 major hospitals in Tanzania.   It will be almost 3 hours from our project site so hopefully we never have to visit there again for emergency care.   

In the middle of nowhere

Our first indication that we were going to work in a remote village came when the village was not marked on any maps and even Google couldn't find a map for us.  With a bit of faith in our local project partner, Christopher, we journeyed 10 hours to Mbeya where we stayed for the night and then met out partner the next morning to travel to Hangomba.  It is 90 minutes on a gravel road from Vwawa which is the nearest town and hospital.  

In Hangomba, we met the village chairman and executive officer in the building used by the local maize farmer cooperative.  They are equivalent to mayor and city manager in US cities, as Chairman is elected and executive officer is a government post.  We  captured the following picture of the village map.  It is about 2km across. 

After walking to a nearby bonafide well, which requires you to bring your own bucket and rope, we continued our walking tour of the village. We visited the village square which was a large open field used monthly for a visiting market.  We also walked 20min to the school through the fields of corn.   

We met the deputy headmaster and members of the school council and teachers to discuss the project to build bathroom facilities for the school. Currently they have about 60 students per "hole in the ground" and no hand washing facilities.  The recommended ratio from SEMA is 20:1 for girls and 25:1 for boys.  The school officials acknowledged that students frequently complain of stomach ache which could be due to water contamination or poor hand washing practices.   One of the other parts of our project is to raise awareness of the benefits of hand washing and to encourage the kids to build tippy-taps for their home use.  

http://www.tippytap.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/How-to-build-a-tippy-tap-manual.pdf

We made a quick visit to a second village that will likely be a future project for Raleigh.  There we discovered the most enormous spiders I've ever seen lurking on the ceiling of the bathrooms. 

Note the 2x4 railing for scale do this one was about 4x6 inches across their legs.  I decided I didn't have to go that bad!!

Tastes like popcorn

Our driver, Hendricks, picked up some roasted corn from a roadside vendor on the drive to the project site earlier this week.  It tasted like popcorn as opposed to sweet corn. It was a great mid-morning snack. 

Mikumi National Park

Left this morning for long journey to Mbeya for pre-visit to our project site.  On the way we drove through Mikumi NP and saw a variety of animals.  Saw elephants, zebra, baboons, impalas, and a few giraffes.  

Beautiful Morogoro

We are training in a beautiful location near Morogoro.  This hill is directly behind field base.  

Tomorrow I am going with 3 other volunteer managers to assess the project site near Mbeya. We will be in a small village named Hangomba working on sanitation blocks (latrines) for a primary school.  This is the first project in the community for Raleigh so we will be meeting with local officials and evaluating facilities such as hospitals and airfields in the event of emergency.  It is likely we will just start excavation on the project in the 19 days that we have on site. We will be back at field base on Wednesday. 

My other 2 phases will be leading trekking(hiking) groups near Tanga and Ingiri.  Each of those will include 2 weeks of backpacking so I'm looking forward to that later in the trip. 

Training going well

No wifi available so using 3G to post a quick update that all is going great. We are training on first aid and many other procedures this week. Tomorrow we are off on an overnight backpacking trip to check out all the leaders equipment and comfort backpacking (trekking). 

Field base 

After collecting the group of 21 volunteer managers from the airport we began the 4 hour drive to field base near Morogoro.  The trip took us through some small villages and up into the hills on the way.  We arrived at base around 2:30 and began unpacking.  Here is a view of the very nice house at field base.  We will stay in tents here for 2 weeks while training and preparing for venturers whom arrive in week 3. 

The hill behind the field base is spectacular as well. 

In Africa now

After 21 hours in an airplane and another 8 in layovers I arrived around 3pm local time in Dar Es Salaam.  

Met another leader in the group, Matt, in Dubai and we caught up while waiting for the flight.  Met a second leader, Andy, at the transit hotel tonight and going to venture out for dinner soon. 

We meet the rest of the volunteer leaders at 8am tomorrow to start our training and preparation for projects.  

First A380

I'm in steerage (coach) but still an impressive looking plane.  13 1/2 hour flight from JFK to Dubai is how I'm spending my Saturday.  

Flashback Thursday

Found my old passport from 1986 for my Operation Raleigh trip to New Zealand.  A little less hair this time around, but I at least look straight into the camera now. 

Africa here I come

Looking forward to being part of year #2 in Tanzania!