Operation Tech Start

Greetings OTS blog readers, Steve here.

I should kick this post off by wishing Peter a very Happy Birthday, or as they say in Kiswahili, ‘Furaha siku ya kuzaliwa.’

Steve instructing farmers on filling out the survey in Usunga

The last 2 weeks have indeed been eventful, and possibly some of the busiest days yet. Late last week Holly had a chance to sit down with the District Commissioner of Tabora, which was great since he is likely to be one of the busiest people in the region. After briefing him on what we are up to at OTS, she provided him with a list of questions, mostly local growth related indicators. This information is substantial to the OTS research sphere, and having such up to date figures will play a crucial role in future planning and development for the organization. The DC has promised to get back to us soon with the questionnaire.

Peter has been considerably busy constructing the communication survey for the farmers over the last 2 weeks. We are all happy to say that his efforts have most definitely paid off as we were able to give it a trial run late last week with favourable results. After a few tweaks, we started to plan the next steps by attending a Leaf Technician meeting last Saturday morning. As Holly mentioned earlier, the Leaf Technicians (LT’s) are trained staffed who work under the ATTT umbrella. They work tirelessly travelling around their assigned regions, meeting with farmers, and conducting training sessions that encourage proper farming practices. In a nutshell, our goal with the communication survey is to work with the LT’s to administer the study, and gather the inputs we need to obtain a better scope of what communication is occurring, and how it might be improved. Thus, we attended the LT meeting to build a rapport with the LT’s, and give them a heads up on what we plan to do.

As of today, Peter and I have now hit 4 major areas in Sikonge, which is located about 2 hours south of Tabora. Luckily our driver was Sebastian Loeb (famous rally car driver) and managed to get us there in about an hour and a half. Ok so he wasn’t really Sebastian Loeb, although he would definitely give him a run for his money at the World Rally Driver’s Championship.

Peter explaining the content of the survey to one of the farmers.

Upon arriving in Sikonge on Monday we met with Antony, the Agronomy Supervisor for the region, Charles (an Area Manager), and Joseph (the Leaf Technician). I have to say that their combined efforts made everything go quite smoothly. We started off the day by meeting with various Government and Town officials for the Sikonge region, simply to say hello and let them know what our research entails. After that, we set out to begin the first training session. Basically what happens here is the LT will go out into the field and round up all the farmers in a given area, and conduct his training session on site. Our first group had a great turn out, with more than 25 farmers. Following Joseph’s seminar, Antony was kind enough to translate a short greeting and introduction on behalf of Peter and myself, and we handed out the surveys.

We will be visiting several regions throughout Tabora over the next few weeks to reach as many farmers as possible. Once we have obtained an adequate sample size for our results, we can begin crunching the numbers. This is no doubt an important time for OTS, and the information we extract from these surveys will be critical to the next phases.

Today, we took some time off from our travels around Tabora region, and decided to make some progress on the education front. This started with a short meeting with the Tanzania Public Service College located right in Tabora. I think I speak for all three of us when I say that we were shocked, and more than a little impressed by what we saw. Especially in light of all the other institutions who have struggled with the apparent security risks tied to obtaining computers. The college currently has 1 fully operational computer lab with more than 30 computers, and another lab that they were just setting up (with another 30). It was also interesting to see that all of the hardware and software was top of the line, from shiny LCD monitors to the most recent licences for the Adobe Creative Suite. The only thing more impressive than the labs themselves were the programs they offered in IT. The college offers both diplomas and certificates in a wide range of programs which teach anything from desktop publishing, to database management and network analysis. Overall, it was a lot of fun meeting with the college teachers and admins today, and we are looking forward to our next visit.

Our next stop was yet another visit to St. Francis, which is always a joy. Today we shadowed a computer class taught by a volunteer named Franzi. We had met with her earlier to see first hand what St. Francis is doing in terms of computer education, and had also given Franzi a copy of our working curriculum and the GCompris software package. It was great to see it in action today, as the children learned the basics of clicking the mouse. The children were having a blast playing with the various games and activities GCompris has to offer, and I am eager to see how their skills develop over time. We will likely be making another trip to the school in the near future, so more on that later.

That’s pretty much all for now. Peter and I will be getting up bright and early tomorrow to travel to Ulyankulu to continue working with the farmers and conducting surveys. So there will be lots to report on in the coming weeks. I should also mention Peter and I shall be making attempt number 2 at a trip to Igombe Dam this Sunday, as our efforts last weekend were met with failure – though for reasons that were entirely not our fault . So hopefully we will have some pretty pictures to post of our journeys next week.

All the best

Steve