Nitekela Water Project – Phase I

Since arriving in Nitekela over a year ago, I’ve been keeping my eye out for possible project ideas that the students and teachers would want to take on as school projects. Seeing how dry things were last August and September, and how often students miss class to carry water from the valley to school, gave me some ideas. In January, I started some conversations with a few teachers and students, to feel out the reality of my observations. It seemed that (as I guessed), the shortage of water posed the biggest problem to the mental and physical health of the students. Over the next few months, I kept talking with teachers to see what we could do.

At the time, the only source of water was two 5,000 liter tanks on the office building, which are relatively new (2009, I believe). These are fine during the rainy season, as they are never fully depleted while it rains every few days. When the rains stop, however, they empty very quickly. Around the end of March, they were totally dry, which means students hike down the hill to the nearby valley to get buckets of water from one of the “wells” at the bottom. Students make the trip several times per week, bringing water to the teachers’ houses and using the remaining buckets to manually fill the two large tanks at the school. Since these tanks have no covers, they are occasionally emptied and refilled due to birds bathing and defecating inside. This doesn’t make much sense to me, since people drink the water from the “wells” without any kind of boiling or filtering, but I’ll leave that story for another time. For some reason, the spouts on the tanks are continually breaking, which poses more problems.

There was also a large cemented hole, about 3.5 meters across by 4 meters deep, unused and dilapidated between two of the classrooms, which caught my interest and my eye. When I asked about it, I was told it was built to collect runoff water from the classroom roofs. Instead of gutters, the water was supposed to just run off the roofs, along the ground, and into the tank. Even during the rainy season, it never collected much water, which meant that either it had many leaks or the nearby area was not landscaped well to direct the flow of water into the tank; most likely both. This was the beginning.

After months of worrying about the “right way” to get a project going, I called a friend who suggested to start with a small grant from Appropriate Projects, under Water Charity, while I worked on a larger grant through Peace Corps. Since the turn-around time for Water Charity is much shorter than larger grants, we could potentially finish a small project while the process for the larger grant went through the necessary channels. I finally felt ready to get this thing moving!

With the help of teachers and key students, a committee of students and faculty was put together to start discussing potential avenues of construction as well as budgets. Together, we decided that we could start our water project by renovating the existing cemented hole near the classrooms. The larger part of the project would be to dig and build tanks next to the teachers’ houses, ideally one for each house. Local workers agreed to help and gave reasonable estimates for the resurfacing of the cemented hole, construction and installation of the gutters, and brick-making. Sand and water would be brought by the students, a barrel and buckets would be brought to the school to store water for the cement-mixing, and cement, aluminum roofing, and nails would be bought in town using grant money. Wooden beams to support the roofing would also be bought using grant money, but from the village since it is readily available.

We applied for the Water Charity grant in early September, were approved within a week, and I picked up funds early in October. By then, students had already cleaned out the tank of water, mud, and other debris, and the workers were breaking up the old cement layer where the cracks were too deep to just cover over with new cement. Within a week of distributing funds, we had 15 bags of cement, 10 sheets of aluminum roofing, and 5kg of nails. The new cement layer inside the tank was almost complete, and brick-making was underway. After another week, the outer wall was completely finished, covered with wooden beams and aluminum roofing, and gutters installed. Morale at school is high and everyone is ready to begin the second stage! We are shooting for three tanks for the teacher housing. The fourth (there are four houses for teachers on campus) will hopefully be done through another small grant.

I’m so freaking proud of my students and staff! We had to adjust the budget a bit, but they made it work! Now to wait for the rain! ^_^

Here is the project under Water Charity. Since are still trying to raise funds for this project, any amount is greatly appreciated. I have decided not to start another Water Charity project until this one has been fully funded. Thanks everyone!!!

Nitekela Water Project: http://appropriateprojects.com/node/1751

 

I'm still alive! ^_^

Alright! I was called out today, by my good friend Kyle, that I've been a horrible friend and need to send some emails. Actually it was more like "Email me!" but basically yeah, I've been doing a bad job of keeping in touch and letting you all know what's going on over here. I started a blog about a year ago and have only posted like three times since then, not including a post that I started in December (about my December break) that's still not finished yet...

Time passes so much differently here living in the village. Sometimes it feels like nothing is happening at all, but all of a sudden three months have gone by and you didn't even realize it. It's a big reason why I'm not very good at updating all of you, haha. And you know I'm already not great at time management in general, so this is just more of the same thing.

Ok, so some more recent things: I'm not sure if you all know, but my site has water problems during the dry season (March to November). I had heard about this before, but got to see it first-hand these last several months. Since about March or April, students have been carrying water to school every day, sometimes twice a day. Each student brings a 10-liter bucket of water from some shallow well down in a nearby valley. They take about an hour round-trip and I'm still not sure exactly where they get it, but I have seen some of the "wells" the villagers use and they are not great. The water is sometimes not even see-through, but the kids will just drink it straight. And they wonder why they get sick so often. They just say it's malaria, but I'm pretty sure upset stomachs and headaches have increased since the rain here stopped.

Here is a project we just started to help with water needs of the students.
http://appropriateprojects.com/node/1751

We are going to clean out a hole that used to be used for rainwater collection, resurface the inside, build a small wall on top, cover it, and add gutters to the nearby school buildings, using a small project grant through Appropriate Projects. Check out the link above to read more and (if you feel so moved) maybe help by donating a few dollars.

Other things going on at school: Form Two and Form Four students are getting ready to take their national exams in a few weeks. I've been going in at night from 8 to 10 to help answer questions and let them borrow some of the books I have.

I've also been doing a very informal kind of art club with a few students during free afternoons. I bring in paper and colored pencils and tell them they can draw whatever they want. There's usually around 15 to 20 students every time =)

I've been thinking about starting an English club lately, but haven't done much with that yet. I just got some good ideas, but I'll see what the other teachers think.

Oh! Guess this is kind of a big deal, but we're past our first year at site! I think I've been in country now for almost 16 months now!! Wow. Less than a year left!

I don't know what else to add, so I'm going to stop now, but if you want to know more about anything in particular, let me know! I'll try to be better about doing these every so often ^_^

The water on the left is what the kids drink, straight from the muddy, sandy holes they get it from. The glass on the right is filtered and safe to drink.

Mastering the Choo

2012.07.16

Mastering the Choo

Or “Choo kiko wapi?”

The choo. The choo is a place to semi-relax. I say “semi” because one cannot really relax while in/on the choo. For many people, like myself, the choo may take some getting used to. But, as many people find out, it is quite a necessity and should be used every day.

What is this choo? “Is it something I want to know about?” you may ask. I would say, yes, it is something you want to know about, especially for when you visit me in Tanzania. You will learn to love the choo. The choo is what we call the toilet in Tanzania. But it is not a sit-down toilet. In some places, it looks like a western-style toilet that has been sunk into the ground, but in other place it is not much more than a hole in the ground. It reminds me of the public restrooms in the subway stations of Japan, where you turn around and squat to do your business. It’s pretty much the same here, but sometimes you need to aim a little. Target sizes vary from place to place. I have gotten very good after a month, but I do miss my longer sessions back home, where I could browse through an issue of Mechanical Engineering or Make: Magazine. I can’t even stay down for more than a few minutes here, which is probably a lot better for me. Oh, and be careful not to fall backward.

I have learned to fully embrace the choo. I have to admit, I was a little scared at first. I took full advantage of the western-style toilet at Msimbazi Center in Dar es Salaam during our first week in-country. Now I’m pretty impartial, since both have their advantages. I’m still very interested to see how the countryside might be where I’m placed in two weeks. I’ve heard stories of bathroom buddies, so I’m curious as far as stage-fright in front of say…a cockroach, rat, or even bats. We’ll see. Well, hopefully not, but I am super excited to see where I go. Less than two weeks until we find out! ^_^

Learning to Cook

2012.07.16

Learning to Cook

Today I taught my third class in country. I went over homework from two classes ago and gave students the chance to ask questions about plotting points. At the end, I had them plot points on the blackboard, after which I connected lines to draw an elephant. When they figured out what it was, they were pretty excited. But I don’t want to talk about class, even though it is pretty awesome to teach these kids. I want to talk about rice.

I don’t know about all of Tanzania, but here at my homestay, cooking rice is more than just cooking rice. It’s a process. We get the raw grain, called mchele, and sift through it to remove rocks, chaff, and other inedibles. Sifting, or kupepeta, includes picking out rocks as well as tossing the grain up into the air and catching it again in a special shallow basket. Then the grain is rinsed thoroughly while the fire (usually charcoal) is heating up. After rinsing, we heat up oil in a pot over the fire until it sizzles and then add the rice. The rice is basically stir-fried for a few minutes (I’m still not sure why) before water is added until it is just above the rice. We let this cook for a while, adding more water if necessary. After ten or 20 minutes, the rice is done.

I have personally never seen rice cooked this way before. My first thought was that maybe the oil is to keep the rice from sticking to the pot. This was definitely not the reason because: a) I asked, and b) it didn’t keep anything from sticking. My idea now is that maybe it tastes better…?

It has been really cool to see the different ways of doing things here. It’s not just the tools people have (such as charcoal fires instead of rice-cookers), but other things like frying the uncooked rice that are interesting to learn about. I had thought there was pretty much only one way to cook rice, but they have a saying here along the lines of: there is one kind of rice, but many ways to cook it. I’ll see if I can ask for the quote/proverb.

My First Math Class!

2012.7.12

My First Math Class!

Today was so awesome! I started the day teaching my first class of real students! It’s still only training, since we will only be teaching here for two weeks, but it was super fun! I know for sure that at least some of them understood what I was teaching. I’m still not sure if they understood it because I taught it well or if they already read through the material, but it was a really good feeling to know that at least 15 people in the class definitely know the material now. I’m planning on checking homework tomorrow that I assigned.

After our daily chai (tea time), we had the written part of our Language Proficiency Interview! It was actually really cool to be able see how much I know on paper! I felt really good about most of the test, even though there were a few words I didn’t know. I might have actually nailed all the grammar points!

After the written test, we (Hannah, Brian, Kyle, and Willie) had lunch and waited around for the exam interviewer to come to our school. I didn’t feel nervous at all while I was waiting, but I guess I was because I couldn’t stay still. For maybe two hours, I was walking around in circles inside the classroom where we study Swahili, waiting for the other four to take their turns with Loyce, the interviewer. I finally made my way in and was really surprised at how much I could understand!!! I think there was actually only one word during the entire interview that I didn’t understand! I was speaking really slowly, and got myself stuck at some points, but overall I think I did alright. What kept happening was that I would understand what Loyce asked me, then I would think of how I would answer in English, then try to translate (on the fly) into Swahili. This was EXTREMELY problematic since my English is much more developed than my Swahili. I kept wanting to say “If…, then…” statements and would/could statements, along with other things I haven’t learned yet. I’m pretty sure it turned out fine, but I kept laughing because I kept doing that throughout the whole interview. There was a point at which I wanted to say the word for milking cows (which I learned yesterday), but I could not remember it!!! After struggling for a while, I decided to go with “get milk from cows”, which still makes sense, but isn’t grammatically correct. At the very end of the interview, when Loyce asked me what I was doing later, I finally remembered and said that I was going to go home and learn how to milk the cow! I was so excited and I could see that Loyce was glad that I remembered it.

When I got home, Ema reminded me to ask Mama about milking the cows. I asked her if it was ok, which it was, and then if I could invite the other volunteers in my group. She said yes! They came over and got to meet my Mama and Baba and a few other people around the house. We had alozela juice, which is freaking awesome. It’s a sweet purple color, and is made by boiling a certain type of flower petal with nuts from a baobao tree. I definitely want to try to make a wine or beer or something out of it later when I get to site. Anyways! They all got to watch Mama and Ema milk one of the cows, but at one point we spooked it and it kicked over the bucket! We all moved out of the stable, then Hannah and Willie went back in, one at a time to watch and take more pictures. It was pretty awesome to have all of them over. I was so happy.

And it just continued through the whole night! I had so much fun cooking dinner with my Dada (host-sister), who is visiting right now from Arusha. We made spaghetti, the Tanzanian way, and talked the whole time, mostly in Swahili! At one point I realized that I was actually understanding most of it, and actually mentioned it to her and the rest of the family a few times. It was just an overall awesome night.

Now I’m finally feeling like I’m getting comfortable in this place. I’m so excited to get to my site in August, wherever it ends up being.