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.