Salama,
Steve and Holly slaving away in the Alliance One office.
Slowly but steady we are making progress on our research and education projects here in Tabora. On the research we are still working on getting the overall picture but we are getting very close to actually going out into field to gather data with Holly already taking first dibs by meeting with the Leaf Technicians. As Steve already announced last week, we also had a very nice visit to St. Francis primary school as a next step in the education part of the project.
Let’s start with St. Francis. St. Francis is a primary school just outside Tabora that already has some computers and has just started computer classes for some of the kids which would make it an excellent candidate for collaboration. Last Wednesday we had the privilege of getting a grand tour of the school and the facilities. I think if I speak for all three of us if I say we were in awe of what we saw. The school looks very well run, even by western standards. It might seem a bit strange to say something like that as if a well run school in Africa automatically doesn’t live up to Western standards, but after what I’ve seen in more rural schools in Malawi it is very exciting and hopeful to see a school like this. The school is not only a primary school but they also run a boys orphanage, a preschool and a pottery. It is them that make the clay filters that we have in our kitchen for filtering the water we drink. And the school is still expanding with a girls orphanage and a secondary school on the way.
One of the main issues when it comes to the computer classes at St. Francis is that there is not really anyone there to teach except for a volunteer which is excellent for now but hardly sustainable. The kids just love sitting behind a computer and learning how to work with this exciting machine. And this is where we come in, or should I say Steve. Because Steve has been working very hard on developing a curriculum (see also the previous blog entries) that could benefit St. Francis or any primary school or institute for that matter in teaching basic computer skills to kids.
We continued our visit to St. Francis on Sunday evening with a visit to Jay and Leen’s house for drinks and a very nice dinner at the boy’s orphanage with father Sami, the principal of St. Francis and the volunteers at St. Francis. We talked about what OTS is, what we can do but mainly we just had a good time. And we managed to get ourselves invited by Jay and father Sami to go to Igombe Dam by bike. Let’s hope we have more success in getting to the dam than the previous volunteers, seeing as the previous volunteer team miserably failed. Undoubtedly an update on that next week!
Holly has been quit busy joining meetings with the Leaf Technicians (LT’s) to get our ideas out there and create some good will amongst the LT’s since we will need them when we go out in to the field to talk to the farmers. Who better to tell what happened that Holly herself so here she goes:
In the past two weeks I have had the opportunity to attend meetings for area Leaf Technicians. These are the guys (and a few gals!) who meet regularly with the 22,000+ farmers in the Tabora region on a regular basis – so these are the people who can really help OTS in connecting us with the people we’re trying to help.
Two weeks back, I went to the Tabora & Nzega meeting in Tabora Town and listened to a rather interesting seminar about best practices for fertilizer usage in the seeding stage of the tobacco season. Best part: it was mainly in English. After the two and half hour meeting I introduced the organization and our goals which seemed to be met warmly. At least everyone wanted a shiny new OTS Rural Research brochure.
And last Friday the traveling trio – me plus the two old men conducting the fertilizer seminars - hit the road for Sikonge, a two-hour, bumpy dirt road ride from Tabora Town OR a one-hour high speed, car-spinning-in-sand, road-block hazard dash. I experienced the latter. After we arrived in Sikonge town with one car-sick passenger barely recovered, a procession of red motorcycles (company-issues to all LTs) led us to a government building where the same fertilizer presentation was given, this time in Swahili. I’ve been warned that the further outside of the metropolis of Tabora Town the more important it would be to speak and understand Swahili…okay okay I get it. I barely kept up!
Anyway, at the end of Friday afternoon’s seminar I once again made my appeal for help from the LT’s in Sikonge – and it rocked, if I must say so myself oh so humbly. I’ve watched and listened and learned that the key to getting folks to process information here is keeping it short and sweet and succinct (like anywhere else in the world). Therefore, I scrapped most of the niceties and simply smiled my way through my speech that touched on the four stages of the project:
- Gathering Inputs - The early stage where we learned about the farming industry, who’s who, what happens when etc.
- Growing Data – Where we are today! This is the stage where we conduct our surveys, focus groups, and interviews of the farmers and stakeholders
- Harvest the Research – Organize all of the information we find into categories that make it easy to see where they are problems/solutions
- Solutions to Market – Finding the means to implement communication solutions that are sustainable (who will fix the technology when it breaks) and affordable (who will pay for the technology and on-going costs)
I passed out the now famous brochures to all the LT’s present and even chatted with a few afterwards who wanted to exchange numbers straight away. Looks like we’re going to get the cooperation we need! The only concern now is keeping up with all my new friends. My phone rang all weekend…this is a good problem to have. Yay.
All right Holly, you ask for a paragraph and you get a blog entry! 
You won’t hear me complain!
Finally I would like to introduce you to our garden pet. This brightly colored fellow or girl has been hanging out with us quite a few times when we sit on the deck outside the volunteer house. Feel free to post any ideas for names!
Our garden pet. Does anyone have a suggestions for a name?
Until next week!
Peter
That’s a male Agama lizard