Well, it's been a good run. 358 posts in just over three years. I've enjoyed sharing my experiences, though of late, blogging has begun to feel like more of a chore than a healthy way to express myself. I thought I would migrate over to Facebook or Twitter, but I've found myself spending a lot of time on Quora lately, so that's probably how I'll be expressing myself, at least for a little while now. I will leave the blog up for a while, but I don't expect that I'll come back to posting. Hope you've enjoyed the ride.

-Daniel

In spite of my rather reclusive tendencies over the past month and a half, last week was a pretty social week. Over the weekend, we had a couple of Americans come stay at our house (we're listed on AirBNB, so tell your friends!) They were really friendly and seemed to really enjoy their time in Arusha. Jodie put in a lot of effort to make sure the house looked beautiful for them and I made sure that they were well fed while they were here (yep, chapati burritos).

After they left, we piled into the car and drove to the beach. We stayed at a gorgeous campsite right on the water for four days. We bought mangoes and a jackfruit on the way and just spent 3 days soaking it all in. The ocean floor was covered with rocks, so it was nice to walk along the beach, but it wasn't great for swimming in the ocean. Instead, they had a nice little pool and we spent our time swimming there and playing with the kids of the other families spending the holidays there. The kids really liked having us throw them in the water (that definitely covered my daily workout) or help them with dives or give them dolphin rides (basically sitting on my back as I swam laps) and even played a game of king of the mountain where they let me be the mountain. Jodie and her friend Steff went out snorkeling and also spent the day on a fishing boat with our friend Jana and some local fishermen bringing back with some pretty impressive catches. I also had plenty of time to read (after seeing how much sun and seasickness they had on the boat rides, I was glad that had passed on it) and they had delicious meals for rather reasonable prices and we even brought Travel Scrabble.

We had to leave at 4:45 AM on Christmas Eve (my deepest apologies to all the neighboring tents for us packing up our tent at that hour) to catch a bus back to Arusha. My housemate Mic had driven us to the campsite, but he only stayed for a day and a half since he had to go back to Arusha for work. The bus ride was a bit uncomfortable since we were in the very back row (where there's no suspension as you travel along the bumpy roads), but we made really good time for the first 80% of the journey. It was really nice to get away from the coast before we had to deal with the sticky, sweaty afternoon weather. Unfortunately, making such good time during that stretch meant that the bus was really struggling the last 20%. We made it back to Arusha and were all relieved to grab a shower as soon as we were home.

The next day was Christmas, and even though we didn't have any festivities in mind, Jodie, Mic and I decided to cook a feast. Jodie baked a chocolate cake and a carrot cake while Mic grilled steak and steamed vegetables for lunch. I made some guacamole to go with lunch and cooked up some falafel for dinner. We also drank sangria all through the day.

All in all, it was a wonderfully relaxing holiday and much needed for all of us.

This is my dog Mandazi (or Dazi for short), which is like a Tanzanian donut. She's about 6 months old and we've had her for nearly 4.5 months. She wishes she were an inside dog, which is why she is trying to climb in our window here.

Dazi mostly eats fish, bread and milk (as well as leftovers). Sometimes, she takes it upon herself to track down rats from the drainage area and bring them home. It's pretty gross. Also, one time she bit our neighbor's chicken. The neighbor wasn't exactly thrilled.

This dog followed me for about a mile one day. I really liked him, but I knew that our neighborhood wouldn't appreciate me bringing another dog home. Still, I was impressed with how fast he could move on three legs. I even decided that I would call him Lefty. Is that cruel?

This was a massive turtle I saw right near our house. Too bad s/he was super-shy.

Seasons greetings, readers!

My apologies that I've written nothing about what's been going on in my life the last two months. This month, I fought off a couple of infections and I started sleeping incredibly erratic hours, so I haven't felt a lot like writing. And to be honest, there hasn't been a whole ton of excitement in my life. Still, I am hoping to get two more posts up here before the new year.

Stay tuned :)

Pader Community Technology Center Workshop

Working on bikes

David from Bikes Not Bombs, Denis and Wokorach from Pader

Bernard and me demonstrating the GCS phone charger

Bernard showing the charcoal crusher

Bernard attaching the charcoal crusher to a bicycle

The charcoal crushing mechanism

Running the charcoal crusher

Bicycle blender

Testing out the bicycle blender

Running the cassava grater

The added safety mechanism for the cassava grater

Cassava grater up close

Sorghum thresher design

Building the bicycle water cart

Testing the bicycle water cart

Bicycle water cart attachment

See previous posts: Travel to Uganda and Preparing for Workshop

The workshop was a three day event, but I could only stay for the first two since I had to grab a bus to Nairobi to catch a flight. We started off by demonstrating some bicycle repair and maintenance skills. My station was on repairing flat tires. The one time I tried to fix my own flat, I wound up destroying the whole tire (not just the tube, mind you). Fortunately, I was staying in a guest house with Bernard, so the night before, he showed me how to do it and I got to practice. For the demo, four different groups came through and we looked at different types of tires (regular, racing and mountain) and then I used my nail to make a puncture as we all took turns using the tire iron, applying the patch and then checking for additional leaks. The participants also learned how to pack a bearing, how to spoke a tire and how to work on a chain.

After that, there was a session on identifying challenges, but I had to miss that one. After lots of hassle, we got a box of GCS equipment that morning (phone chargers and corn shellers), so I spent my time setting the kit up. By the time I finished setting things up (with some help from Bernard, since I was having an embarrassingly difficult time and for some reason couldn't apply basic problem solving skills), they were just finishing up the discussion.

Then, we demonstrated a few technologies that we had set up for the occasion. There was a charcoal crusher* that Bernard designed and built based off a project that he had worked on at IDDS in 2008. There was a peanut grinder using spare bicycle parts (everyone loved this one since we got to eat a sesame-peanut butter concoction that we prepared to show the machine). There was a blender that ran off the back wheel of a bicycle (people also enjoyed the smoothies that came out of this demo).

In the afternoon, we broke off into teams to work on the design challenges that they had chosen. I was working with a team of Caritas staff members who were looking at designing a sorghum thresher. All of the other participants had previously done a workshop with Amy, so they were familiar with the design process, but the Caritas staff had been a last minute addition. It was really interesting to see what it's like trying to design something with people as they try to decide the order of steps themselves (imagine watching someone build a house starting with the roof). I worked with them to try to guide them down the right path (identifying constraints before selecting design elements) and though it was a bit slower than usual, by the end of the day, we had an idea that we were happy with.

The second day was mostly building and testing ideas. It was a bit difficult with the sorghum threshing team since we didn't have dried sorghum that was ready for threshing, but they still produced a pretty nifty machine. Mid-morning we took a break and Bernard and I demonstrated the GCS technologies for everyone. People were really amazed to see the corn sheller work and were also very excited by the bicycle phone charger. Everyone kept passing up their phone to see if it could be charged by the bicycle (they all could). It was really unfortunate that shipping is such an expense, because it definitely drives the price beyond the means of the communities.

All of the sessions were translated from English into Acholi, the local language, by the Caritas staff. I had to leave after the second day, which was really sad. At dinner that night, the participants gave me an Acholi name. They called me Otam, which means the thinker. I think they just saw me constantly staring at bicycles and could hear the wheels turning in my head. I was really touched by everyone there. I was a little disappointing that the only words that I learned in Acholi were "hello" "thank you" and "good". Still, I managed to get pretty far with those as well as lots of wild gesturing.

I also really enjoyed the food in the community. Every morning, we ate a very hearty cassava stew with very sugary tea. Then lunch and dinner were a mixture of greens (but not kale like I usually eat in Kenya and Tanzania) with posho (the Ugandan term for what we call ugali in Kiswahili), rice with beans, peanut stew (really delicious) and roasted goat. We were definitely full at the end of every meal.

* It was fun that this was included, since it meant that Amy and I got to run a charcoal burn the night before to provide the material for the demonstration.

Amy Smith has made several trips to northern Uganda and run workshops there on Creative Capacity Building and the design process. Her partner on the ground is Caritas, a Catholic organization that runs relief programs across the country. We (Amy, Bernard and I) were traveling north in a Caritas vehicle, which was a welcome change after some long bus rides.

As we traveled, we admired the scenery, and Michael (the driver) talked about the landscape and the history. He reminded us that some people did well during Idi Amin's reign who have now seen their standard of living drop during the presidency of Yoweri Museveni. Amy and I both noted that much of the scenery was much greener than what we're used to seeing (she used to live in Botswana in the Kalahari desert, while my experiences in Kenya saw lots of sparse landscapes). Michael mentioned the dangers of it as we drove through a pine forest and he explained that when the needles fall to the ground and dry out, the fires can be devastating. Then we started talking about pine needle gasification and inevitably to other simple technologies.

We arrived in Gulu and met David from Bikes not Bombs (BNB) who was also running the workshop. He had gone shopping and grabbed a few bikes as well as tons of spare parts for the sessions that we were going to run. David was collecting footage of a health project that BNB is running in another nearby community, so he left us with the supplies and returned to the village. We visited the Caritas office in Gulu and picked up a few more supplies at the market before heading to Pader.

When we reached Pader and were greeted by my friend Denis who was on my team at IDDS in Ghana. He showed us the community technology center that Amy had established there and I recognized several of the machines there from other programs that I've done with Amy. We set to work organizing the space so that it would be ready for the event. We were still missing one box (as stated in the last post, Kampala Coach had left our luggage behind), so we couldn't set up the GCS equipment. Instead, I set to work cleaning out a peanut butter maker which had not been cleaned in several months. After that, I designed a table and took inventory of all the supplies in the workshop. Meanwhile, Bernard set about creating a bicycle powered charcoal crusher to serve as an example.

We had 1.5 days in Pader before the participants arrived, so it was also a good opportunity to learn our way around the town a bit. Wokorach, the other staff member at the workshop, helped me buy some tools at the market and talked about the difficulties of life in the area. We also spent an evening at Denis's house where his wife cooked a delicious supper, and spent the whole time complaining that the large spread wasn't nearly enough food and she didn't like that we were rushing back to the workshop. I also took full advantage of MTN Mobile Money (another phone banking system similar to Safaricom's Mpesa), which has taken the bulk of the mobile banking market in Uganda (although when I was in Kampala, I noticed that there were several agents for Kenya's and Tanzania's mobile money systems in spite of the fact that they don't work with Ugandan sim cards).

I also had the opportunity to meet the local Caritas staff. It was most remarkable to talk with Jennifer, who is a social worker and helped us with the translation during the event. Her stories were terrifying and she told them with such non-chalance that it was difficult to contemplate the horrors that many of these people had lived through. Rather than letting the stories depress us, though, we saw it as a testament to the resilience of the community and saw it as a great motivator for running this workshop.

This is a map of northern Uganda that was painted in the Caritas office in Gulu. I thought it was really nifty.

Last month, my friend Bernard and I were working on a pedal-power seminar in Uganda, so we took the bus from Arusha. There are buses that go directly to Uganda, but we needed to run a couple of errands in Nairobi, so we stopped off there for a few hours. I went to a phone store and they were able to program a sim card so that I could have my old phone number (when my sim card was stolen, I lost lots of valuable contacts), and I just have to say that Safaricom really has their act together with that sort of thing*.

We had bought tickets and dropped off our bags with Kampala Coach for the 9:30 PM bus. It's nice, since the seats are comfortable, so it's easy to sleep on the way. Unfortunately, our bus didn't show up until 11 PM, so we were pretty tired by that point and fell asleep as soon as we were in our seats. We made it to the border at 9 AM and it was a pretty easy crossing. The bigger hassle was about 2 hours up the road at a checkpoint for the Ugandan Revenue Authority, where they held our bus and made sure that everyone had paid the necessary taxes on what they had brought into the country (one man had 3 of some kind of electronic device, so they figured he was some kind of smuggler). We were glad when they finally let us keep moving.

We admired the view of the Nile as we passed through Jinja and a fellow passenger told us all about the hydro-power station there. We arrived in Kampala at 3 PM (the bus was supposed to arrive at 10 AM) and we discovered that our bags never made it onto the bus. Always make sure that your bags make it onto the bus! After a lot of arguing with the staff, they said that they would make some phone calls and that it would be there the next morning. We went and found a small guest house nearby and grabbed a room and then found some supper before crashing.

Saturday morning, I went back to the Kampala Coach station to ask about the bags and they hadn't arrived. The man made some more phone calls and said that they would be there the next morning. I had to accept that, since I had to go to a meeting. The city was pretty crazy the whole day (and the night before) in preparation for the big Uganda-Kenya soccer match. If Uganda won, they would receive a spot in the 2012 Africa Cup of Nations. The way that people were blaring their vuvuzelas and running around town hollering and waving flags, you would be forgiven for assuming that they had already won. The match came out as a 0-0 draw, which meant that Uganda will have to try again for the next Africa Cup of Nations in two years. A friend explained that it was because they started their international players who hadn't practiced with the rest of the team, and that they had won the rest of their matches until the last two when those players came back.

I also met with a colleague who attended the Unreasonable Institute in Colorado in 2011 (I attended in 2010) and we talked a lot about his project in Uganda and it was great to sit down with him and talk. He also took me to a small restaurant and introduced me to the rolex, which is a Ugandan food consisting of a scrambled egg rolled up into a chapati (get it? rolled eggs / rolex) and eaten with ketchup and chili sauce. It is delicious.

On Sunday morning, we went back to the Kampala Coach station and waited for the bus to arrive. It was supposed to be there at 10, so we arrived at 9:45. It rained most of the morning, so I got soaked searching the luggage compartment of one of the buses before someone told me that the bus hadn't come from Nairobi. I managed to take my mind off of the situation by watching an episode of a South African soap opera that seemed pretty compelling. We were ready to give up hope on the bus at 2 PM, when it finally rolled up and we managed to grab our bags (well, after waiting another hour for them to process all of the parcels on the bus). We were so excited to have fresh clothes after about 84 hours without a change of clothes.

* Safaricom is owned by the same company as Vodacom, which is my phone provider in Tanzania. However, in spite of how wonderful I've found Safaricom, I'm equally frustrated by the service of Vodacom Tanzania.

Well, I've definitely had my ups and downs, as have the other 41 people who landed in Kenya with me three years ago today to serve in the Peace Corps. I definitely would not have guessed that three years on I would be living in Tanzania and would go such a long time without seeing any of those 41 friends (I saw a few folks in June and haven't seen anyone since). Anyway, cheers to my friends! I am thinking about all of you today :)

Well, with my erratic sleep schedule, it's a good thing that I'm not in a 9 to 5 gig anymore. I no longer work for Global Cycle Solutions, although I'm still involved with the company as an investor and a partner organization. I have switched to full-time work on AISE, which is exciting and lots of fun. AISE stands for Accelerating Innovations and Social Entrepreneurship and it is pronounced "I say".

Bernard and I have been working nearly full-time on this, and we now have a website and a logo (and I'm grateful to everyone who gave us feedback on it) and a Twitter handle, which makes it a lot easier to have meetings about our work. That is, it gives us a bit more legitimacy. We spoke with some folks at FoodWaterShelter here in Arusha today, and I rode half an hour outside of Arusha to the beautiful campus of Mt. Meru University in Ngaramtoni to meet with some potential partners. People are already really excited about our design curriculum and are asking when we will be offering sessions.

More often, though, we are in the workshop, working on a few different technologies. Bernard has a really cool pedal-powered drill press, so he's been working on finalizing the design for that. He also has an amazing system for producing drip irrigation kits, so we're going to be ready to test that soon. I've been working on my moringa oil press and also looking at a bicycle powered grain grinder. It's a bit unfocused, but we both work well when there's a lot going on. Also, if you noticed the "Technologies" tab on our website, as soon as all of this is more complete, we'll be putting it up there.

We are now on our way to Uganda for a pedal-power workshop with Amy Smith and David from Bikes not Bombs. We're really excited about the program (and I get to see Denis from IDDS again) and hopefully we'll have more exciting technologies coming out of it. From there, I'll be spending a couple of weeks in the states before coming back to Arusha to start running some outreach programs through AISE.

The whole year, we've had pretty heavy power cuts here in Arusha. Since getting back from Ghana, though, it's been even worse. We've been losing power for 8-16 hours nearly every day. In theory, the power gets cut at 8 AM one day and then comes back at 5 PM, then the next day, the power is off until 8 AM, on until 5 PM, and then cut off again until midnight. In reality, they like to throw the switch on or off at random times throughout the week*. They keep to the schedule just well enough that you expect it to be reliable, and then I get really frustrated as it switches off while I'm in the middle of work. I've been mostly working off a desktop computer, so as soon as the power goes off, so does my work.

In order to be productive when I can, I've spent a lot of nights taking advantage of the electricity while it's there. The power is most predictable during the midnight to 8 AM stretch, so I try to make the most of it. Unfortunately, as someone who is known for erratic sleep patterns, I stay up until about 4 AM on average and was awake to see 4 sunrises last week. I rarely get out of bed before 10 AM and on weekends, I can easily sleep until 2. Well, I never really was a morning person. Today I was out of bed at 8:30 and considered it a huge accomplishment.

I don't really know what the situation is at Tanesco (the Tanzanian Electric Supply Company), but it is really infuriating. There were rumors that they were increasing supply at the start of the month, but that was supposed to be in September. Now that it's the start of October, the situation has been a lot better. We've had power for about 20 hours per day. I remain cautiously optimistic.

* A few times, the electricity has been off for longer than 24 hours, one time it reached 60 hours. There was one really beautiful stretch where it stayed on for 48 hours.

Well, at the end of my last post, I mentioned that we have a dog who has been staying at our house who we call Reuben. He's definitely fully grown, but he bounds all over the place like a puppy, so I say it still counts. He likes to follow me when I leave the house on foot (which is about 90% of the time). It's usually a minor nuissance when I go to the shop as I often have to break up fights between him and other dogs in the neighborhood. It can be a major nuissance when I am walking to Frisbee, since he always tries to run through our game, which causes fights with the dogs in that neighborhood as well as the other players.

We have a Danish neighbor at our office, who regularly travels to Nairobi, so it's hard for her to keep a dog. She had a brand-new puppy and after seeing how well we got along with her, she decided to give her to us. We named her Mandaazi, which is fried dough Tanzanian style. It's a cute name and it definitely suits her. Since she was so small, we decided it would be okay to let her in the house from time to time, but that made Reuben incredibly jealous, so we just decided to keep her outside (also she seems to consider it her mission to pee on every square inch of floorspace in our house). She is without a doubt the crafty one. She likes to try to squeeze through the grate on our front door, so we can't keep that open to get a breeze, and she now likes to try climbing in through one of our low-level windows, so we have to keep that closed too (though it is really impressive to see how determined she is).

Then, one morning my housemate Mic showed up with another dog even smaller than Mandaazi. I mostly just referred to him as Tatu, meaning "the third". My housemate Joanna started calling him Chubs, since he's a bit pudgy. The kids in the neighborhood* pronounce it more like Chubzy, so that what I've taken to calling him. Apparently Tatu is a girl's name (I don't think I've met anyone named Tatu, yet), so Mic has taken to calling him Three. Anyway Chubz (I'll stick with this name for now) is probably the most persistent, always trying to get into the house (he also enjoys peeing all over the house) or dig under the gate and he's even willing to run through the stream near our house to get to the shop when I'm buying food (Reuben and I can both hop over it, while Mandaazi usually prefers to stay dry).

We had Mandaazi and Chubz vaccinated, so they've been pretty healthy so far. We feed them an odd diet of milk, fried fish**, bread and leftovers. They're growing well, so we'll probably keep at it. We're moving to a new house soon*** and we'll bring Mandaazi and Chubz with us, but Reuben will probably stay behind. He's good at fending for himself, and in theory he has an owner near our house. Well, some guy tried to sell him to us, but that may have been a scam. Someone gave Reuben a collar, though, which is pretty rare for the strays here. Anyway, our puppies are amazing companions and we're working on training them to be well-behaved.

* They've taken to coming into our yard whenever they feel like it, which can be a bit overwhelming. Some of the kids like to play games like Spit on the Dog or Kick the Ball Against the Garage Door. We usually have to chase them away at that point.

** They sell these really small fried fish along the road. They're about 3 inches long and pretty flat and bony. I've had a few dishes made with them, and I think they are much better for dogs than people.

*** Our lease runs out on our current place in about two weeks, and even though we'd love to extend, the landlord wants the house for his son.

Shortly after getting back to Arusha, my friend Alistair came to visit for a few days. Alistair was at IDDS in Ghana with me and was in the region to do some work in Malawi, which was canceled due to the political situation there. He was traveling with his friend John and they spent a few days in Ngorongoro and the Serengeti on a safari.

Since they're both Scottish, I also figured I'd take them on a hike through the hills of Arusha. Man, it's really unfortunate that I don't have pictures right now, since they're amazing. We walked through the foothills of Mt. Meru to a waterfall. This was my third time going on this hike, but it was my first time leading it. As many people have learned over the years, it's a really bad idea to rely on my sense of direction. However, in this case, one of the Tanzanians along the way told us that we couldn't go along the path, so it's not entirely my fault. In any case, we discovered a cool, new route that was a bit more scenic and in spite of my worries that the waterfall would be a mere trickle due to the lack of rains, it was probably the most powerful that I've ever seen it. The water was rushing down from about 150 feet and there was a little spot a quarter of the way up where we could stand right behind the waterfall (it's really cold water, so it's usually better not to run through the waterfall). After almost 3 hours to get there, it's a truly wondrous sight.

We had a picnic of PB&J, and some Tanzanians came over to ask if they could also make some sandwiches. I agreed, and we were mobbed. The peanut butter disappeared and I later saw someone with a handful of it, just slowly eating it like an ice cream cone. A few people criticized us for not bringing enough bread. We directed them to their friends who had snatched it and run off with it.

We then took the proper path to get back to town. As we were walking, some children were asking for candy or money or food or books (in that order), and since we didn't have any at that point, we just kept walking. Then, suddenly a rock whizzed past about an inch from my ear. I was furious, but decided to keep walking (the last time I did the hike, a different group of kids was throwing rocks at us--I don't want to give the impression that the kids in the area are ill-tempered, but there are some pockets where people can be slightly hostile to visitors). Since we were so high up at that point, we could see all of Arusha and it made me realize that Arusha is a lot more beautiful from above. Also, on the way down, my navigation took us in a bit of a circle. Oops. Like I said, I really shouldn't be a navigator.

Of course, the worst part of the hike is always the following laundry day when I spend an eternity scrubbing the dirt and dust out of my trousers. It's a good thing that the view is so breathtaking.

The other cool part of their visit was that Alistair left me his copy of Aid and Other Dirty Business by Giles Bolton, which I really enjoyed. I didn't agree with the author on a few points, but mostly, I really liked his writing and would definitely recommend it. He does a better job than most authors in the genre of proposing solutions and analyzing their practicality. He could have done a better job explaining some of the numbers that he was using in his book, but otherwise, a very worthwhile read.

It was nice to make it back to Arusha after two months of traveling. I have to say, when you come back after being away for a while, you always notice everything that has changed.

First, when I got home, we were having a good-bye party for my roommate Rose, which was really sad (glad I made it back in time to see her off). I was still kinda dazed from the traveling, and I realized that I only knew about a quarter of the people there. I definitely enjoyed myself at the party. But probably not as much as the Tanzanians who built a little grill in our yard and roasted some goat. They were incredibly triumphant about the whole experience.

That night I also discovered that we had acquired a new dog. My housemate Reuben had petted him once, and I suppose that act of kindness was so refreshing for the dog that he decided to take up a post as our guard. Unfortunately, he's a bit too aggressive and kinda rubs us all the wrong way, but he hasn't figured out that we'd prefer if he didn't spend time at our house. We call him Reuben, since we've had dogs named after most of the other occupants of the house.

I also noticed some changes in town. Gas prices have gone up about 10% and it's now over 2000 shillings per liter (about $1.25). Also, the exchange rate is going up again, and it's now over 1600 shillings to the dollar (it was just over 1500 when I left). Food prices are rising a bit more slowly (though some products have risen much more quickly).

It was also nice to see that the bridge near our office that they've been rebuilding for most of the year was finally finished. Some of the big construction projects in town have really come together quickly and are starting to look pretty impressive. But all in all, two months is a pretty short time, and things mostly stayed the same while I was gone.

When I arrived in Nairobi, the entry visa* took up the last page in my passport. I knew this was coming, so I planned to spend an extra day in Nairobi before returning to Arusha, since there wouldn't have been any space to stamp my passport at the border.

We had arrived in the morning (I didn't even know they had red-eye flights across Africa) and I hadn't slept on the flight, though I managed to grab a 2 hour nap on the taxi ride in from the airport (traffic in Nairobi is ridiculous these days, that used to be a 40 minute drive). After dropping my bags at Upper Hill, I headed straight to the embassy, though the only thing on my mind at that point was a nap.

I found the embassy pretty easily (it's rather well-fortified after the bombing in 1998) and went to the security line, only to be informed that I couldn't enter without an appointment. She gave me a sheet to set an appointment. I was too tired to read the whole page, so I just called the number she had circled only to discover that it was the "emergency services" line. The person on the line was friendly and told me that I needed to go online to make an appointment. So I found an internet cafe and scheduled an appointment for the next day.

When I arrived the next day, I made it through the security line easily and found a long line in the embassy for services. Really defeats the purpose of the appointment if they have you schedule it just to wait around for an hour. While I was there, I had plenty of time to kill, and I noted the outdated posting reminding me that replacement passport pages were recently a free service. When it was finally my turn, I had to pay my $82 so that they could stitch 6 pieces of paper into my passport. That price still baffles me and seems nearly extortionate. If they're taking that much money off of me, I'm pretty sure that they should offer that service whenever I feel like showing up. I will say that at least they handled the job fairly quickly.

In conclusion, getting new passport pages was an all-around unpleasant experience. I have seven years left on this passport, which probably means I'll get to do it at least once more. I'll do everything I can to keep my scowling to a minimum.

*Also, they just doubled all of their prices for entering Kenya. A transit visa is now $20 and the 3 month single entry visa is now $50.

At the end of IDDS, we were flying out of Accra, which meant there was a six hour bus ride down. It was sad because there were a lot of good-byes on the bus. I was part of the group that was flying out the next day, so there were about 20 of us staying in a guest house on the other side of town. When we got there, Habib was sorting out the price with the bus driver (he was a lot better at driving the price than he was at driving a bus) while Amit was arranging everything with the receptionist at the guest house. I got to help the porters move the bags to people's rooms and then make sure that the food was all sorted out.

After that, a few of us opted to go out to get a few drinks. I was ready to sleep, but I was coaxed into going out and I wound up napping in the taxi on the way over. It was difficult to find a place that was open on a Sunday night, but we found a spot and all had a beer. It turns out that 650 mL bottles are plenty filling (I had only drank two other times in Ghana, so I didn't want to overdo), so we spent a while there reflecting on the whole summer and thinking about what IDDS will look like in 2012.

The next day, I slept in pretty late, which was much needed after those 5 weeks in Kumasi. I woke up in time for lunch, and even though I wasn't hungry, I headed down to the cafe at the hotel and discovered that they weren't serving lunch to anyone, even though some people needed to head to the airport shortly. After a bit of arguing they put some food out for people. I tried to meet with my friend Frances who I hadn't seen since I was in Ghana in 2008, but things were a bit disorganized and we didn't get to meet up (it didn't help that she works just outside of Accra and we were staying at the opposite end of the city).

Instead, I had to take care of some stuff for GCS. We had a customer in Togo, so we thought we could reduce his shipping fee by having me get it to him in Accra. Unfortunately, I didn't know what I would need to take care of on arrival, so I didn't have much time to organize things. He said that he could drive in the next day, but since my flight was later that evening, he wound up arranging for me to bring it to a friend of his in Accra (our conversation was an interesting bit of French and English, and it turns out my French is pretty rusty these days). I was supposed to get lunch before heading out, but since they had delayed in preparing it, I wound up leaving before I had any food.

The taxi ride wound up taking the better part of an hour, but it was nice to see lots of Accra. I made it to the area that the man had told me, but I couldn't find the restaurant that he said was next to this office. I was walking around with 2 GCS maize shellers on my back (46 lbs) getting impatient. Most of the shopkeepers on the road didn't know the restaurant, but fortunately, I found a minister who was able to point me in the right direction and we had a nice five minute conversation about trees since he was heading the same way. I made it to the office and unpacked the bag for the man there. We had very quick explanations of what we both do, and then I realized that I needed to get to the airport, so he gave me his business card so that I could follow up.

I grabbed a taxi to the airport fearing that it would take an eternity with the distance and the rush hour traffic jam (and it would feel even longer since I still hadn't eaten anything the whole day). It turned out that we were actually only a couple of miles from the airport, so I got there with plenty of time to spare. I didn't have much to do as I waited for the rest of my group to arrive (there were 7 other people from IDDS on my flight and they were bringing my suitcase from the guest house). I decided to explore the airport a bit, which was interesting, but nothing too exciting to report. The rest of my group arrived after an hour and a half.

They had brought my reimbursement, which was great because it meant that I could finally grab some food (good thing Ramadan had prepared me for long days without food). I also had to run to the currency exchange shop, which was closed by that time, but I found a man in the airport flower shop who arranged to convert my Ghanaian cedis into dollars. I was in such a rush, I didn't even notice that the $10 that he gave me was counterfeit. After that, I tried to find food at the airport that wasn't horrendously overpriced, but was completely unsuccessful, so I grabbed something small before they hurried us to our gate so that we could wait for our plane. As we went to the gate, we said our last good-byes to folks flying to Brazil and I couldn't help thinking about how amazing IDDS was this year.

There were lots of misadventures with transportation in Ghana. One morning, a driver just decided not to show up and tried to use that as a bargaining chip to extort a higher price. Another driver saw nothing wrong with driving through Kumasi's busy streets without brakes. And some of the drivers felt that Ghana's lax enforcement of speed limits was an all-clear to drive like a maniac. Fortunately, most of the time I was traveling with Frank and Gideon who drove a tro-tro (the Ghanaian term for a minibus, the same as a Tanzanian daladala or a Kenyan matatu) with our safety in mind and for a reasonable price. But I had one particular misadventure that I'm just grateful didn't end up worse.

At the end of Maker Faire, Tish (the other American on my team) and I were exhausted and decided to leave a little early to find some energy for the final events. We grabbed a taxi right outside Suame and began the 45 minute drive back to the hostel. About ten minutes up the road, our lane was ending so we had to merge. Since it was around rush hour, traffic was moving pretty slowly and people were reluctant to let us in. As we sat there, we heard a loud crash behind us and a split second later felt something smash into us. We looked behind and saw that a huge truck crashed into the car behind us, knocking it into our taxi. Fortunately, we were all unhurt, just a bit rattled.

The driver hopped out and pulled off the last bit of his rear bumper which was still attached and threw it into the trunk. Then he found an opening in the other lane and started moving. Tish and I were a bit surprised that he didn't want to stop and exchange information with the other drivers since he probably could get compensated for the damage. And just ahead, a man came up to the window and said something (in a mixture of Twi and English) and all I could pick up was "wrong lane" and "pull over here". The driver made to pull over just ahead and then just kept going as we came to the roundabout.

At this point, Tish and I were concerned, but it didn't seem like we could do much and we didn't really know what was going on. Also, we were a bit out of it. I actually found myself nodding off a bit. Then all of a sudden, I was awakened by someone opening my door (this was about fifteen minutes later) and trying to climb in. Our driver was pretty jammed into traffic and couldn't really weave anywhere. A second man appeared and climbed in the front seat and struggled with the driver to pull the keys out of the ignition. I'm not really sure what happened next, but Tish and I climbed out and just started walking. This was clearly something that we did not want to be involved with. When we were talking with Joseph (from Tanzania) later he explained that the driver was probably in some kind of trouble before that accident which is why he was trying to clear out so quickly and the people who climbed into our cab had probably followed us that whole time trying to find a time to settle the score. So much for unwinding.

The last week of IDDS also marked the beginning of Ramadan, a month-long fast in the Islamic calendar where they do not eat or drink anything from sunrise to sunset. Since IDDS is a great place to learn about other cultures, several of us decided to experience Ramadan first hand. Each night at our Iftar (the first meal after sunset where people break their fast together), there were three Muslims and four or more non-Muslims (at one point, there were ten of us fasting together). During the day, we would support one another as we counted down the hours until we could rehydrate since the heat in Ghana makes it especially challenging (and in my case, until I could recaffeinate, since the huge drop in caffeine intake gave my system a bit of a shock). The 4 AM breakfasts were not as well attended, since most people just opted for a midnight snack and uninterrupted sleep, though I did go one morning when Mustafa and Saba (both Pakistani) made some delicious French toast.

Fasting was rather challenging for me as I had lots going on (well, we all did). I had that one day where I was helping to run three sessions and most of the other days we were in the machine shop or running around Suame the whole day. I was pretty much running on fumes at the end of the day and often found myself just trying to lie down in the late afternoon. At one point, two of my teammates were having a protracted discussion about the advantages and disadvantages of male circumcision (using a marker with and without its cap to avoid being too explicit) and I just didn't have the energy to steer the conversation back to oil-related topics. All in all, though, it was really rewarding and those of us who were fasting felt a very strong bond through our shared experience. And best of all, Habib from India would bring huge quantities of delicious mango and watermelons for us every evening. I miss those dinners a lot.

My favorite IDDS event every year is the potluck where people make different dishes to showcase all of the different nations at the event. I upheld my tradition of not cooking with the USA team, and instead Amy Smith and I formed the Charcoal Nation. We prepared C-turtles (get it? like sea turtles) where all of the ingredients started with C. We used caramel, cashews, charcoal and chocolate. By mixing in some finely ground charcoal powder with the caramel, the result had a nice turtly color with the chocolate making the shell and the cashews acting as the legs and the tail. I spent a lot of time arranging the nicely, only to discover that they weren't staying together as they hardened, so it just made more sense to do them as clusters. Still, at the end of the day, they were delicious and we received lots of compliments at the event.

Amy and I also wore black clothing and smeared some charcoal on our faces so that we would look the part of the president and vice president of the charcoal nation. However, the best dressed person of the night was definitely Rose, whose dress had the pattern of the Tanzanian flag. All the food was delicious, and it was wonderful to eat food from Brazil and Zambia (thankfully they didn't bring any caterpillars this year) and South Asia (India and Pakistan cooked together and made quite a feast) and the US (which featured some delicious chocolate banana pancakes) and every other corner of the world all in one meal.

Then, in an effort to speed up some of the metabolism after such a huge meal, some drummers showed up and we danced the night away. Abby (the Ghanaian from my team) led us for some time and we were all impressed with her seemingly endless supply of energy as she called out every person to come and dance with her while she kept the beat on her calabash. At the end of the night, I think we all slept very well.

The Ghanaian diet is very different from what I am used to in East Africa. Although both rely heavily on starches alongside vegetables cooked in oil, the food in Ghana wound up being much heavier. Part of it is that cassava and yams are pretty dense, and part of it is that I think we were eating a lot more palm oil in Ghana, while in East Africa, the concentration of soybean oil tends to be somewhat lower.

Now, if it were up to me, we would eat nothing but fruit the whole time we were there, since the mangoes and pineapples and avocadoes and watermelons were absolutely divine (bananas, oranges and papaya were more hit or miss). However, we did have quite an assortment of foods. My favorite meal is red-red, which is cowpeas in tomato sauce (and lots of palm oil) served alongside fried plantains. There weren't a whole lot of pulses (as in peas and beans) on offer, so I was definitely excited when we had red-red. Another favorite was palava, usually served alongside boiled yams. Palava (apparently also called green-green) uses a specific leaf (maybe pumpkin) and its fried with some mashed up agouti seeds (kinda like pumpkin seeds) which always gave the appearance of having scrambled egg in the dish, even though it was in fact vegan-safe.

One of the more difficult meals was groundnut stew, which was served with fufu (mashed cassava) and was just not as good as I remembered it being on previous meals. I generally stayed away from banku, which is similar to ugali that I often eat in East Africa, only this is fermented (there was also something called nsiho which was almost the same as ugali, except it was salted). I also struggled a bit with some of the vegetarian meals, which were mostly tomato sauce with palm oil and a small amount of onions and green peppers. I ate the vegetarian meals quite a bit of the time, though I did make sure to grab fish meals when I could while we were on the Volta river. There was one day where we ordered shrimp, which were rather small and one of the Ghanaians yelled at someone for trying to remove the shell and the legs "If you do that, there won't be anything left!" Oh, and I was also persuaded to try "coat". It's basically cooked leather. And unsurprisingly, it's about as pleasant as you would expect eating leather to be. We also ate lots and lots of rice, much of the time it was prepared as jollof rice, which involves cooking it in oil, spices and tomato sauce. Some days I was thrilled to have jollof rice, while other days I was not so enthusiastic.

We had a lot of prepared meals on campus at the cafeteria. After a couple of days, I was really excited every time that I wasn't eating the cafeteria food. They were very receptive to our requests, but in general, it was just so much oil. There was also a woman who would bring scones or meat/veggie pies for breakfast, and those were always a treat. When we were working in Suame, we would order lunches from a nearby cafe most days, which I preferred to the cafeteria (though I think there were several people who preferred the cafeteria food). In the village, our hosts cooked most of our meals for us (absolutely delicious), and we would make sure to grab some kosi (a delicious cowpea batter deep fried and served with spices) and ballfloat (large spherical pieces of dough, fried up like doughnuts), which always gave us all the energy that we needed for the day. Rose from Tanzania commented that if Tanzanians ate these kinds of foods, maybe they'd be as strong as the Ghanaians. The Ghanaians all laughed at that.

My diet actually consisted of quite a lot of yogurt, which we could buy from the shop in the dorm. It was thin enough to drink and much sweeter than any non-frozen yogurt I've ever had. I also drank an unhealthy amount of soda (as usual), and Coke had a much stronger market presence than Pepsi. The interesting part was that the three flavors of Fanta that they had in Ghana were orange (I assume everywhere they make Fanta includes orange), fruit cocktail which was in fact the exact same color and flavor as the variety they call passion fruit in Tanzania and lemon, which was similar to the citrus flavor (my all-time favorite, which I've only found in some parts of Kenya), but not quite as good. I also periodically bought baked beans, small packets of cookies, ramen noodles or just opted for a peanut butter sandwich.

I cooked only a few times, and usually when other people proposed that we cook for a larger group. One time, I helped make tostones, which come from Guatemala (I think) and are kinda like refried plantains. I also made some masala french fries at 1 AM one time for people who were working that late. I teamed up with Amy a few times and helped make a delightful tomato soup and some pineapple fried rice. And when we had a large barbecue, I was manning the grill for quite a while, and even managed not to burn a few of the ears of corn that I was responsible for.

There were several people who cooked pretty much every night including my suitemate Sanjeev. He complained that most cooking besides his own did not have enough spices (fortunately he brought his own from India) and generally cooked for at least five people. Jessica and Amit (both from California) were really good at accusing me of not eating and then sharing their delicious cooking with me as well. I felt bad that I never really returned the favor.

For final presentations we set up tables at ITTU in Suame Magazine and brought people from the communities where we worked (there were three village clusters--mine was New Longoro) as well as local artisans and technicians. Each team had their prototype as well as some posters explaining the technology and the venture. It was amazing that in spite of our proximity, I still didn't know the direction that some of the teams had taken with their projects.

At the start of the event, all the teams had the opportunity to present about our projects. My team nominated me to do our talking and then I was told that we would be the first team presenting. As the moment approached I could feel the dread setting in. And then the opening started an hour and a half late because a certain attendee decided to show up at his own convenience and our hosts insisted that we couldn't start before he arrived. I gritted my teeth as I had to thank him during my speech for attending.

Another difficulty was that they set up speakers and had a DJ. We used them to make announcements and the music helped attract some passers-by to see what we were doing. Unfortunately, the speakers were pointed right at our table, so it was sometimes difficult to explain our technology to the attendees. We kept asking the DJ to turn the music down, but as soon as we walked away, they would turn it up again. Finally, I thought back to my days as a sound technician and found the perfect situation. There is nothing more offensive than tinkering with someone else's controls, so I slid a couple of faders before turning down the master volume. The DJ was fuming and unplugged his CD player. All of a sudden it was a lot easier to explain our project.

We were a bit frantic at times during our demonstration as we collected moringa seeds from the team next to us after they had removed the shells (their project was a machine that did just that). Then we winnowed the shells away (okay, so about 95% of the winnowing was done by Rose from Tanzania) and tried to put them into our machine as fast as the passers by could turn the handcrank. People were generally impressed with our machine and some wanted to know when and where they might be able to buy one*.

There was also a fair bit of down time (it seemed like we had either 20 people at the booth or no people) so I was able to wander around and see what everyone else had been working on. I enjoyed trying out other people's technologies and asking all sorts of questions (often in the direction of whether we could try it out in Tanzania). I will say that having the exhibition run for two days was probably longer than necessary, but otherwise, it was a great way to get lots of feedback. I have to give kudos to Nathan who organized the event for doing an outstanding job.

* That was a pretty good compliment for our design, but there were some teams where people were offering to buy their prototype.

Most of our fieldwork was done in the village of New Longoro about 5 hours north of Kumasi. When we first arrived, we attended a community meeting under a huge mango tree. It was a great way to meet the community and explain what we were hoping to accomplish with the visit (and mercifully, no one commented on the fact that I had spilled water down the front of my trousers--I always have a way with first impressions).

Our host was named Pastor George and he managed to accommodate all of us (about thirty people) and provide food for us. We had most of our meals in a little gazebo in front of his house which was a great place to interact as a smaller group and we would often stay there late into the night singing* and having a wonderful time. We also enjoyed walking to the river** on the other side of town (about 2 kilometers) and grab some kosi (deep fried batter made with cowpeas and some spices) and ballfloat (huge spherical fried dough) for breakfast. Since we were quite a strain on the house, we tried to help out by carrying some water from the pump a kilometer up the road (though we certainly brought much less water than we ended up using).

I was pretty good at carrying the water without spilling much. However, pouring it into the tank was an area where I needed more practice. Photo credit: Ben Chapman

We met lots of interesting people walking around the village and just asking questions. They gave us lots of information about all sorts of oilseeds available in their community. Most of the villagers are farmers, so they were really excited about our project and had lots of input. The women were interested in the possibility of a new way of earning some extra income. The men took one look at our machine and asked us why it wasn't hooked up to a motor. The women were eager to show that they could crank the machine themselves.

We also visited the nearby communities of Bamboi, Gomboi and Dwere (dw makes a j sound) to collect more information. Bamboi is a larger village on the other side of the river which provided some useful information on markets, but we didn't spend much time there. Gomboi and Dwere are much smaller and quite a way from the road. We would cram seven people into a taxi which was tiny and practically dragging on the ground with all of us as it wended its way down nearly washed away roads (at one point we had to reassemble a mini-bridge and guide the wheels onto the planks so it wouldn't tip over--we contemplated carrying the taxi, which probably would have been easier). The people of Gomboi and Dwere were very friendly and really helped us gain perspective of the challenges in more remote settings. I have to say that one of my favorite experiences during IDDS was riding bikes back about 20 km to New Longoro.

Photo Credit: Ben Chapman

There was one weekend during IDDS where we didn't have anything scheduled, so a few of us drove up to New Longoro and went canoeing on the river. It was a really great group and we had an amazing time on the water. Several of us were a bit the workaholic type so New Longoro proved an invaluable escape. It really is breathtaking.

Photo credit: Joseph Kisyoky

* Amy brought her guitar and we sang lots of folk music. Also, there was a keyboard there and Sophia from Ghana was very eager to set us up as a gospel choir.

** This is the Volta river, which is absolutely beautiful.

The main reason for working in Kumasi is Suame Magazine, a massive industrial area where thousands of technicians work on all sorts of projects. The mass of workshops and spare part retailers is only interrupted by the occasional food stand or drinks shop. The bulk of the workshops do some kind of metalworking from blacksmithing to welding to metal salvaging. It's a wonder to behold.

We spent a lot of our time at the Intermediate Technology Transfer Unit, which was allowing us to use their workspace and the staff was very helpful all throughout. The workshop had a welding kit, a lathe, a grinder and most of the tools we needed for what we were building. It was a bit overwhelming with all the teams there some days, but they always managed to take care of everything and nothing ever phased them.

It was always an adventure to go searching for a part since there were hundreds of plots where they just had heaps of scrap metal. I learned my way around a bit and could generally find what I needed. You always had to have your wits about you as you wove your way down the roads where people were moving all sorts of heavy machinery and cars drove down nearly impassable roads inches away from you. Most of the shopkeepers were friendly and helpful and it was an uphill battle to bargain for a fair price, but that's all part of the experience.

We were regular customers for this guy

One thing that surprised me was how many people were upset by smoking. I realize that there is plenty of flammable material all around, but there are also forges and people burning trash and sparks flying everywhere, so I hope it's not a safety issue. It is a rather crowded area, so people may have been concerned about breathing in hazardous fumes, but I worry that they were already ingesting a fair bit of hazardous compounds anyway in that environment. Whatever the cause, I respected their eagerness to speak their mind about it.

Most of our work was in Kumasi, so we stayed on the campus of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST). We had a whole dorm to ourselves and we took up three floors leaving the top floor for project work and the ground floor for the guests we had coming through. The dorm had 4 suites per floor (picture an X and the suites are each of the legs, while there is a hallway in the middle where they all meet) and each suite had 3 double rooms plus 2 bathrooms, a kitchen and a common room.

My suitemates were pretty awesome guys, but I didn't spend nearly as much time in my suite as I would have liked. My roommate was a Ghanaian named Mensah, but we always seemed to be on different schedules, so we didn't end up seeing much of one another. The one thing that I could count on was that whenever I walked through in the evening, Sanjeev from India would be cooking an elaborate dish (he complained that all the Ghanaian food didn't have enough spices) for everyone who was around.

I spent a good amount of time on the top floor. Each team took the beds out of one of the rooms and filled it with flip charts and assorted project materials. We also took over the kitchen in our suite to use as our testing space. There was even an area in the hallway with workbenches and tools where people would work until all hours of the night and then pull out the guitar for a quick jam session. There was also one suite for the organizers where we stored extra supplies and took care of things like evaluations and accounting.

The top floor shared work area

Testing out prototypes in the kitchen

The hostel even had a little shop that was stocked with yogurt and soda and other things that people might consume. The selection wasn't great, especially in terms of fresh fruit and vegetables, but you couldn't beat the convenience. The hostel also had pretty good wireless coverage (well, some people from the US might have found it more frustrating) and a back-up generator for the few times that power was cut. The staff in the dorm was generally helpful (though very reluctant to distribute toilet paper for some inexplicable reason) and made our stay really wonderful. There was even a nice patch of grass out front where we had lots of meetings and events. The only real difficulty was when it rained, the hallways were all soaked through.

The building was on the far side of campus, but it was right near a classroom and cafeteria that we used most days. It was also within walking distance of the campus pool and a commercial area off campus where we could get more variety in our provisions. It was somewhat quiet since not many people were on campus for the summer, but the lack of distractions made it much easier to focus on our projects.

The living space is probably one of the most important parts of the IDDS experience and I was really happy with my experience at the hostel. It was nice being able to wander around almost any time of day and find people to work with or talk to and even people who insisted that I eat some of what they were cooking. It made it much easier to build the kind of strong community that we needed for working together during the summit and moving forward.

My friend Mustafa from Pakistan made it his mission to learn ten new things everyday. I thought that was a pretty cool goal. In that vein, I decided that I would try to speak ten languages everyday. I made sure to greet the Ghanaians everyday in Twi (the national language) and Mo (a local language in the communities where we were working) and I greeted the Zambians everyday in Nyanja. I took every opportunity that I could to brush up my Spanish with the Guatemalans and Mexican. I used the scattered Hindi phrases that I knew with the Indians and Pakistanis. I worked on my German and tried to pick up some Danish with the participant from Denmark. I attempted to speak Portuguese with the Brazilians. I butchered French when speaking to the Cambodians (and one of the Ghanaians who had picked up a bit of French). English was the main language of the event and I tried to use bits of it's Sierra Leonian Krio cousin. And I was speaking quite a bit of Kiswahili as well.

Rose (the Tanzanian on my team) doesn't speak much English, so I was doing quite a bit of translation. There were four other Kiswahili speakers at the event, so we shared the task as much as possible. Denis (the Ugandan on my team) and I each did it about 40 percent of the time at team meetings, and unfortunately, there were some that we just had to recap later since after a while, my brain needed a break from translating. I definitely couldn't convey all of the meaning as we went along since there are a lot of subtleties in English that get lost in translation and also, my vocabulary has some gaps in it. During a lot of sessions, I would frantically signal to speakers to talk more slowly (and one at a time) so that I could translate (and periodically I would have to lean over to Rose and say "I don't understand him/her at all"). It was pretty difficult to both translate and share ideas during team meetings, but Dennis, Rose and I all seemed to manage, and our teammates were very patient with us most of the time. At the end of the summit, people voted for Rose to speak at our closing ceremony, which made me really happy. She delivered part of her speech in English, which was wonderful, but for the bulk of it, she spoke much to fast in Kiswahili and Joseph from Tanzania was struggling to keep up.

I also signed up to compile the language sheets for people to learn some useful phrases in Twi and Mo. It was a good way to pick up some additional phrases. The languages have a few letters and sounds that we don't really have in English, but I was pretty proud when I managed to pronounce the word "kpegri" to the satisfaction of some of our Mo speakers. You pronounce it just like it's spelled.

I have to admit that I'm a bit disappointed with myself that I didn't have the opportunity to learn more languages while I was there. I know it would have meant a lot to the Zambians if I had picked up some Bemba and similarly I would have loved to learn some Khmer from the Cambodians. Still, the language center of my brain definitely got a healthy workout and I am glad that everyone was so patient as I struggled with their languages and made tols of nistakes.

I was really lucky to have such an amazing team. Of course, all the people at IDDS are wonderful, but that doesn't always ensure that people will work well together. In our case, I was blown away with how much we were able to accomplish and by everyone's energy in carrying the project forward. My team was one of the least geographically diverse with everyone coming from East Africa, West Africa or the US (all the other teams had at least one member from Latin America or Asia), but we still had a wide variety of perspectives. We were also one of the older teams with three team members around 40 years old (for several teams everyone was under 30) which did mean that unlike many other teams we were not working past 11 pm, but the richness of their experiences proved invaluable for our project.

Abby is a schoolteacher in central Ghana and her father has a large plot of moringa trees, so she was able to provide a lot of context and ensure continuity for our project. She was our youngest team member at 21, but she was always eager for us to learn some of the language and she was regularly checking on what other people were working on in case she could bring a sample back to her community. The other participants really appreciated her energy and they voted for her to give a speech at the final ceremony, which was really nice.

Denis came from Uganda and does a lot of work up there with people who have lived in refugee camps their whole lives. He brought an incredibly positive attitude and good sense of humor to our sessions everyday. He was incredibly handy in the workshop and was always thinking about what we could do to make the design better. He also brought a lot of national pride and made sure that we all knew how beautiful Uganda was everyday (there was only one time where he talked about what he had lived through under the reign of Idi Amin).

Rose came from Tanzania and spoke very little English (she could often understand the general concepts that people were saying, but was a bit shy about speaking English). During a lot of our team meetings and class sessions, Dennis and I would be sure to sit close to her to translate (there were a few times where we were doing community interviews where the speaker would say something in Twi, which Abby would translate into English, which I would translate into Kiswahili). She was very thoughtful and always made sure that she had something to keep her busy. Rose also had a difficult time convincing people that she was 39--in fact, at one point, she showed us a picture of her wearing her son's school uniform and we all would have sworn she was about 16.

Sylvester came from Sierra Leone where he teaches workshop skills near the capital. He had a certain impatience which really helped to propel us forward. He brought a very interesting sense of humor and liked to take lots of pictures. Once we started building in the workshop, he was a constant fountain of ideas and we all had to struggle to keep up with him.

Tish came from the US and is about to start working at MIT (she graduated two years after me, but we knew each other when we were there). She had also spent a lot of time in Kenya and Tanzania working on mechanical engineering projects while she was there, so she and I made the East African bent of our team even stronger (also meant that two-thirds of our team could speak some Kiswahili, so by the end Sylvester and Abby were picking up some of the words). She was by far the most organized person on the team and was good at helping us plan so that we could get everything done.

Amy Smith was our mentor, which was really amazing. Even though she had a million things going on the whole summer, she always made herself available to us and was able to provide guidance without steering the project in a particular direction. She also has spent a lot of time in Ghana and provided additional perspective on the communities where we were working.

Our team had a really strong bond, and whenever there were tasks where the team was supposed to split up and divide the labor, we found ourselves doing everything together until later in the summit where we were building prototypes and it was impossible to all work on one thing. In one of our first activities, we used colored pieces of rubber to make mini-Ghanaian flags for other participants as souvenirs, which we received lots of compliments for. We definitely had a few rough patches and at times, we spent too much time thinking and not enough time doing, but in the end, we had a wonderful balance.

One of the most exciting opportunities I had this summer was to stand up in front of everyone and lead some sessions. It feels weird to think of the participants as students, which is why we euphemistically referred to it as "delivering content". The curriculum team does an amazing job of balancing the amount of time spent in the classroom with hands-on learning experiences and I worked on both (I hope to do that more in future IDDSes).

On the third day of the summit, we had a series of Build-It activities where participants built different simple technologies to learn how to use various tools. There were six different areas (metal-working, sheet metal fabrication, wood carving, electronics circuitry, plastics-working and metal casting) and I was on the metal-working team. We were building charcoal presses (link to pdf), so I signed up since I figured I could be pretty useful in explaining the context and why the tool was useful. But as the session went on, I realized that we were a bit short-handed, so my friend Joseph from Tanzania and I taught people how to use the hacksaw, the shear and files to make clean cuts. Then we teamed up with some of the technicians at the Intermediate Technology Transfer Unit where we were working in order to teach welding and especially welding safety. By the end of the session we had three welding stations and I was supervising one of them. It was interesting to be teaching and supervising stick-welding since I have never done it in my life and and I haven't even welded anything in three years. Still, we didn't break anything and no one got hurt and all in all, the charcoal presses came out really well. I was impressed with everyone in the session, but especially with a Zambian woman named Mainess who picked up all the techniques so quickly and was super-eager to try everything. (There's even a picture of me helping her on the IDDS blog (about two-thirds of the way down the page).)

For one of the sessions on venture design, they asked me to present some slides with Ben Linder and Bob Nanes (both much, much bigger names than mine). They prepared most of the slides, but I offered input on some of the topics and they took some of my suggestions. I also put together a slide on my work with GCS and presented a few of the slides during the session. I wish that I had practiced a bit more since I was having a bit of trouble hitting all the points that I wanted to make, but all in all I was really excited about how the session went.

Later that morning we had a panel on water treatment ventures* and my friends Mustafa from Pakistan and John from Zambia and I were up in front to moderate. There were some logistical headaches (the hall where we originally planned to have the event cut off their power and then demanded that we pay them exorbitant rates to switch on the generator--we just changed the venue in the end), but once we got started, it went off really well. Running the event took very little effort and every time I was about to say "Let's have a question for our first panelist" or "Are there any questions from some of the women in the audience?" the audience came through without me having to say a word. I was really happy with the event and very grateful to the panelists who shared lots of interesting experiences.

And that afternoon we had an activity where participants took apart different technologies to consider the manufacturing techniques involved. I was working with Mustafa again and Suprio from India with help from a few of the other organizers to make sure that we knew what we were talking apart. Our project was those cheap flashlights, and our main goal was to make sure that we didn't just sound like we were quoting Wikipedia. In the end, the flashlight had lots of different parts and a short time to talk about injection molding, electro-plating plastics, spring steel, stamping and drawing, circuit board design and some of the other subtle intricacies. It was a really fun session and it was great to have a hands-on activity to wrap up the day, but at the end of the session, I was downright exhausted and ready to collapse. I actually did end up skipping out on the next session to get a nap, which was unfortunate since I really wanted to catch that session, but I figured it was less rude to fall asleep elsewhere than to fall asleep in the classroom.

* Water technologies tends to be a popular sector and none of the projects this year involved water, so we decided it would be good to bring in some speakers to talk about water issues. Since the panel on solar issues was called the Solar Panel, we debated calling this event either the Water Table or the Water Board.

On my team I was a partinizer (participating organizer), which meant that I was in charge of making sure my team had all the resources we needed. From tracking down a high-precision scale so that we could measure how efficient our machine was to keeping tabs on what other teams were working on in case there was scope for collaboration*. I also made sure that all of our documentation was taken care of so that we can continue work after IDDS. And partinizers are supposed to make sure that the team is working together well, but that was the easiest task for me.

I was also on the evaluations committee which meant that I wrote up the weekly evaluations and then helped to compile the data after the fact. The evaluations committee is my favorite part of IDDS since it's a great way to identify areas where we can improve and act on it right away. I also love the people on the committee and it was a great way to get a lot closer to them (a lot of our work seemed to happen in the 1 AM to 3 AM timeframe). Of course, it's not all about filling in surveys--a big part of what we do is just talking to everyone and finding out what they're enjoying and what they'd like to see change. At times it was a bit overwhelming and it made me realize that as much as I love working on a team, I can probably accomplish more if I work as an organizer and put more time in as a problem solver, so I expect that next year I will do just that.

Then there's all the random odd-jobs that come up during the summit. I was on photocopy duty once, which involved a 45 minute search for a shop that was open. I was helping with some of the IT tasks, which mostly meant configuring people's computers to the hostel's internet settings--I felt sympathy for the IT team that spent a lot more time with random computer issues. I was also a back-up for the health committee which meant checking in on some of the malaria cases (there were a few fierce cases and Amit spent a lot of time making sure everyone received the care they needed) and cleaning a few wounds.

All in all, I felt like I was doing less than usual and it felt like we were a bit short-handed on the organizing team. But still, I was pretty impressed with everything that we pulled together this summer.

* In this case, there was one team that was working on a moringa sheller and another team that was using neem oil to help reduce the spread of malaria. We were able to help one another a lot with our projects.

After figuring out what kind of oil we were looking at, the next challenge was figuring out how we would actually extract the oil.

It seems that the most common method for extracting the oil currently involves grinding the seeds into powder and then putting it in boiling water. The oil can be skimmed off the top. Unfortunately, we were not able to observe this process firsthand or find accurate data on the yield through this process. Still, we wanted to explore other methods to see if they would improve on this process.

I was really excited about the prospect of solvent extraction--that is, using chemicals that can separate the oil from the seedcake. I was interested since it seemed like there was a lot of scope for designing a low-cost system that could use solvents to produce oil. The advantage is that once the oil has been separated from the solvent (usually hexane, but there are other compounds that can be used), the solvent can be reused over and over, while the oil that comes out is very high quality. Unfortunately, the solvents tend to be fairly expensive (it's not a recurring expense, but it still was going to set the price of our system higher than we wanted) and also somewhat dangerous (part of the process requires heating the system, and if that isn't done carefully, the solvents are highly flammable and can cause a lot of damage) and it is also one of the slowest methods for extracting oil. I was pretty disappointed when I had to concede that the system just wasn't viable.

We also built a hydraulic jack press, which used a car jack and a plunger to apply pressure to a chamber filled with moringa seeds. The system had a lot of advantages in that it was safe, easy to use and understand, produced very clean oil and could be built easily in most major towns. We played with a few different designs based on what we had seen with screw presses (very useful for palm and coconut since the oil flows out so well) and ram presses (uses a massive piston to deliver the huge amounts of force necessary to extract the oil from the seeds), but ultimately the press was leaving too much oil behind in the seeds, so we knew we would need a more efficient press.

A three ton car jack brings the plunger down to crush the seeds. There are small slits in the cup so that oil can flow out and collect in the plastic container.

We finally built a small screw expeller, which I was very skeptical about from the start. I had worked with a screw expeller called the Piteba in 2008 and found the machine frustrating to use and too inconsistent in its performance. Other people had reported more satisfactory experiences than mine, but I decided to spend more time building the jack press above. However, I had to say that it was highly impressive that they were able to produce a screw auger with variable pitch without computerized machinery. The auger was also slightly bigger than the Piteba design and much less expensive. We were able to tweak some elements in the design to improve the performance and by final presentations we were pretty proud of our final prototype.

Our locally produced auger. The diameter is 1.5 inches. You can see how the seeds are compressed as it moves down the channel in order to make it easier to extract the oil. Photo credit - Ben Chapman

As the user turns the crank, the seedcake comes out the end, while the oil comes out the slit and can be collected in the cup. It is necessary to heat the chamber to improve the yield. In our final design, we had a better looking funnel, heater and oil collection tray. Photo credit - Dennis Obwona

Our challenge was to find a way for people in local communities in central Ghana to extract oil from local crops (edible and/or medicinal oils, not the black stuff) so that they could generate income. We looked at all sorts of local crops, and I learned a lot about different oilseeds.

Peanut (usually called groundnuts in Ghana) oil seemed like it would have lots of potential, since so many families have a peanut farm and there are so many peanuts in the community. Additionally, peanuts are typically cultivated by the women where we were working (the main men's crop in that area is yams) so it seemed like a good opportunity to develop a venture with the local women. Unfortunately, after talking to shopkeepers, we found out that even if peanut oil were selling at 50 percent more* than the cost of the imported cooking oil (predominantly palm oil from southeast Asia) that most people in the community were already using, the cost of the seeds would be right at that level, meaning that there is not currently much money to be earned by the processors. That's not to say that a peanut oil venture in that area couldn't be profitable (there is also value in the high protein seedcake that remains after pressing the oil) only that the venture was probably beyond the scope of what we could accomplish in five weeks.

Neem oil seemed really exciting since there is some research to suggest that consuming neem oil can make people less desirable to mosquitoes and hence less prone to malaria. It also tends to sell for a price on international markets. And the trees grow abundantly in central Ghana. Unfortunately, other research was talking about possible side effects including reduced fertility. It's hard to know what to believe, but we figured it was better to focus on a seed that might not have so much bad press surrounding it.

Palm oil was an obvious candidate since people already cook with so much and even produce it locally for soap production. The palm fruit has lots of oil and the kernel inside has some oil of its own. Unfortunately, palm isn't grown in central Ghana and most of the palm that they process is bought from markets closer to the coast. The hardest part is that many people are so used to the shear quantity of oil that comes from palm that it is easy to be disappointed by other seeds with their lower yields.

We looked at essential oils from oranges and lemons. The sky-high price of the oils was very attractive, but the incredibly low yields and complexity of the process was somewhat off-putting. It was hard to nix the idea, but in the end, we felt that it was for the best.

Shea butter was a strong contender, but it is already extensively processed in the community and previous projects to find better technologies, teams have struggled in the past (I was a member of one of those teams). Kapok seed oil and cottonseed oil were both interesting candidates, but the current processing methods seemed rather efficient, so we figured it was better not to mess with a good thing. There was an interesting plant that they called a kei apple tree (however, it does not resemble the kei apple tree that is grown in East Africa) which was an interesting candidate, but it seemed like there would need to be quite a bit of work in market development, so we left it alone for the time being (it could be an interesting project down the line).

In the end, we opted to focus on moringa** oil. Lots of people in the area have started planting moringa trees since it restores health to the soil and the leaves are sold as a high value nutritional supplement. The oil is very valuable for cosmetics as it is capable of holding even the most volatile scents. And it is used in some Ayurvedic treatments and it is currently being branded in some circles as an aphrodisiac (I'm happy to support those rumors if it will help the market grow, but I have to admit that I had a bit of the oil and did not notice any change). Demand for the oil is pretty high, though it is not always easy for Ghanaians to reach those markets. Also, the seeds are incredibly light (we found an average of 0.3 grams per seed), and contain about 40 percent oil by weight, so it takes over 8000 seeds to produce one kg of oil if you have 100 percent efficiency (a fairly unrealistic assumption), though with proper care, research suggests that trees can produce 15,000 to 25,000 seeds, but the trees that we saw weren't producing anywhere near that level. But all in all, there was a lot of enthusiasm from the community (when we talked about the low yield, one person responded by suggesting that they plant lots of moringa trees as soon as possible) and clearly a market opportunity.

* Customers will pay that premium because peanut oil is easier to cook with and usually goes a bit further.

** The autocorrect feature has suggested that I look at enema oil and mooring oil. Dear me.

I was in Kumasi, Ghana from July 2nd until August 9th for the 5th annual International Development Design Summit (IDDS). This was my third time on the organizing team and it was a really wonderful experience. I'm going to write up some of my experiences and put them up in installments. Check out the IDDS blog here This is going to be a rather long series of posts. Sorry that I don't have pictures to include.

Kenya ratified a new constitution last year that among other things brought in some much needed reforms to their judicial system. When I was in the police station, I saw that they may still have a little ways to go.

A man comes in and hands the officer a piece of paper. The officer opens the cell and lets a prisoner out. The first man explains that he is the lawyer and that the case will be happening in the afternoon and he wants to make sure that his client is ready. Then the lawyer tells the client that he doesn't want any surprises in the courtroom, so he asks the client point blank if he had any drugs with him when he was arrested. The client who was been staring at his shoes the whole time glances up at me and all the officers within earshot and asks if they can have the conversation some place private. And the lawyer takes this as a ridiculous request and demands that he just answer the question. The client sheepishly mumbles something and the lawyer thanks him and says that they will meet one another in the courtroom that afternoon.

I'm not very good at chess. I always end up making a move with some brilliant plan in mind. And right at that instant when it's too late, I see that I've just given up my queen for nothing. I had one of those moments in Nairobi.

I was walking down the road at 8 PM, which is a pretty unsafe thing to do. I figured it was just 15 minutes to the spot where I could pick up my matatu and I've walked that road dozens of times (in daylight hours). I was being especially vigilant and walking rather briskly, even trying to stay close to traffic so that no one would have the opportunity to jump out of the bushes and grab me. I really pride myself on being able to judge situations.

Being vigilant is a bit tiring. After 12 minutes of my walk, I started thinking about the fact that when I got back to Upper Hill I was going to talk with my niece on Skype video. I've never had the bandwidth for a good conversation and I haven't met her in person (she was 8 months old at that time and she is so adorable) so I was really excited about being able to call her.

Just before I was about to turn the corner for my matatu stop, I hopped over a ditch and I realized that I had given away my queen. There were two men who had come out of nowhere and they shoved me right into the ditch I had hopped over.

One man took my bag.

Then he went through my pockets.

He took my wallet.

He took my phone.

The other man stood over us.

The piece of wood he was wielding as a weapon didn't seem too intimidating.

But if I had tried to move they could have kicked the s*** out of me then and there.

It was miserable.

Absolutely miserable.

All I could think was:

Can't people see what's happening?

Why isn't anyone doing anything to stop this?

It was over in less than a minute. I had the presence of mind to ask them for matatu fare so that I could get back to Upper Hill, and they left me with 50 shillings. I thought about the one holding the piece of wood. It was probably the size of a doorstop. I was pretty sure that he was on miraa or something stronger based on how erratic he seemed. So at least the proceeds of my belongings are in part supporting Nairobi's drug industry. I thought about the fact that the terrain was pretty slippery and I could have probably taken away the one man's footing really easily, but my prospects for escape weren't too good, so it was probably good that I didn't make things worse for myself.

I took stock of things and noticed that my keys were still in my pocket, so I was really glad that I hadn't lost that (my keychain flash drive is a handy gadget and I also have an IDDS logo on there that has a lot of sentimental value). I also still had my passport in my passport carrier hidden safely in my trousers. I mean, they were good at what they were doing, but they could only be so thorough if they were going to keep moving. Besides, they got my wallet*, my smartphone, my old phone, my iPod, my Kindle, my netbook**, my backpack*** and a few other random effects that I was carrying with me. Now, I never carry that much with me, and it was just a fluke that I needed to bring so much with me that day. Had I some shred of common sense, I certainly would have taken a taxi.

Physically I was fine. My back was a bit sore from where I had landed and I was really uncomfortable in my damp jeans since the ground was moist. In terms of value, I lost a lot. But that wasn't really what bothered me. I was concerned about all of the little things. I couldn't call my friends in Kenya to say good-bye to them before flying to Ghana. They got my driver's license which is certainly useless to them and which I regularly use and do not look forward to replacing. They took away my ability to check email, and I had lots of work to get done (and also a few blog posts that I had wanted to put online). They took away my pictures. I had a lot of books on my Kindle and I wasn't traveling with any physical books. And I wasn't going to have that video call with my niece.

I was really glad that I was staying at Upper Hill. Rich and Jessie take really good care of people in those situations and they helped me get everything sorted out. I went to the police station and filled out a report. They were pretty confused when I tried to explain to them that I had an electronic book. I don't expect they'll catch the thieves. I mean, they didn't even ask me for any kind of physical description, just the most basic notes on what, where and when. At the end, they told me that I should really be more safe in Nairobi and that I was lucky that I didn't get worse. I had to agree with them there.

* I had about $350 in cash in USD and Kenyan Shillings since I had the money that I needed for while I was in Ghana as well.

**Although with the damage to the screen, that one was probably worth about as much as the computer case I had.

***Joke is on them with that one too. The zipper was broken and I never could get rid of the smell of sunscreen inside of there.

I had continued my intensive blogging about my adventures in Kenya and then Uganda, but unfortunately those posts were lost as well as the pictures. Now then, I left Nairobi and spent a few days out west with my friends Daniel and Jeff in Kisumu (they were in Peace Corps with me and have extended so that they are serving for a third year). They were wonderful hosts and hopefully I introduced them to some new exciting recipes in exchange for their hospitality. I was impressed with the amount and variety of fruits and vegetables in the market in Kisumu, but not much else about the city. Maybe I spent too much time in areas with open sewers or had too many arguments with matatu conductors, but I was pretty relieved when I hopped on the matatu out of Kisumu. I don't really know why, but I was having trouble falling asleep before 4 in the morning and was a bit groggy because of that. I probably should have made an effort to visit Lake Victoria, but I decided it was just easier to get out of town.

My next stop was Kakamega, which is famous for the massive forest outside of town. Arriving in town was a refreshing experience after my time in Kisumu. The air has such a fresh feel (probably due to the nearby forest--I grew up just a couple of miles from a wonderful forest preserve) and I was greeted by my friend Elizabeth (name changed as a precautionary measure). We had a few classes together back in high school and now she's a Peace Corps Volunteer in Kenya. Small world, eh? Anyway, I spent two days in her village which is a few kilometers outside of Kakamega and it was really nice. We spent a lot of time catching up on life back home and life in East Africa. She even baked cookies during one of the brief spells when there was electricity in the community. It was really amazing since I haven't had fresh cookies in a really long time.

It was sad leaving Kakamega, and I was planning on heading back to Bungoma to visit some folks there. Unfortunately, when I left Kisumu, I had forgotten my passport there, so I went back to see Jeff and Daniel again. I was also glad to see my friend Jessica who was in the Peace Corps group before me and is now in a nifty MBA program at Colorado State. We caught up for a bit before she had to run and catch a bus. Then Daniel and I made some quesadillas and the next day I was on a bus to Uganda.

The trip to Uganda was pretty uneventful (those are the best kind of journeys) and I arrived in Jinja late in the evening to meet with a donor who has been supporting my work in Tanzania. The organization brought together several of the groups they have been working with in East Africa to brainstorm some solutions to the problems that we've been dealing with and to find opportunities to collaborate moving forward. It was a crazy productive 24 hours and it was great to meet a lot of really cool people. I'm really excited about everyone who I met and definitely have some ideas for working with some groups in Kenya and Uganda.

During lunch the following day, a random person at the restaurant came up to me and asked me if I knew Amy Smith. He added that my IDDS shirt made me a bit conspicuous. Turns out he used to work with an organization that has collaborated a bit with D-Lab in the past. He was telling me some pretty horrific things about that organization, which were pretty depressing. Still, accountability is pretty low in this line of work, so stories like his are tragically common.

In the evening we went swimming in the Nile. It was pretty amazing. The current was super-strong and pulling us out, so we actually had a bit of a struggle to get back to land. Then a short time later, we saw some other tourists hop in the water nonchalantly and just start floating. We were a bit concerned, but we watched as the current took them in a nice circle around where we were and left them right back where they started. We ran back to the water and floated around the circuit twice. It was incredible.

After that, I headed down to Kampala to learn a bit more about a couple of the organizations that I had met there. I was pretty impressed with the massiveness of Kampala and the gaudiness of some parts of the city (outside the main mall and casino, there was a statue with some dinosaurs chasing a group of cavemen and cavewomen--I'm so bummed that I lost that picture). It was beautiful in some places, but there were an uncomfortable number of billboards with the Ugandan president looking at you. The most alarming one that I saw was the one that promised tolerance of most religions. I wonder which ones aren't tolerated.

I visited a group called Educate in Kampala and was pretty impressed with what they were working on there. I was talking a bunch with their technology manager about their work with cookstoves and making charcoal from agricultural waste. We were going on for 20 minutes before I asked him where he had learned so much about charcoal and he answered that he had found a bunch of pdfs online by someone named Amy Smith from MIT. Small world again. Well, we talked a bit more and after that I met some of the trainers who they've been working with in their program. All in all, it was a pretty enjoyable day.

After that, I hopped on a bus back to Nairobi. I opted for Easy Coach, which turned out to be anything but easy. (I've ridden with Easy Coach twice and they are 2 for 2 in disappointing me.) It was an overnight bus, and at 7 in the morning, our bus broke down and we stood in the frigid morning air (I haven't seen winter since 2008, so anything in the 40s is now frigid to me). So yeah, don't travel with Easy Coach.

I made it back to Nairobi to see my friend Jessica again and talk a lot more and then celebrate my friend Maria's birthday. I had a few more things to do in Nairobi before flying to Ghana, but I was pretty much ready to be done with adventure at that point, so I was looking forward to a laid-back 48 hours after that before flying out. Unfortunately, things didn't quite work out that way.

Welcome back to my adventure tales. It's been a pretty crazy month and a half. I was doing so much crazy stuff and I hate to consolidate it so much, but I wanted to take a bit more time to reflect before I wrote about the end of June. You'll understand shortly. In any case, I'm grateful for the messages that I got from people while I was traveling. I'm back in Arusha and settling back into my groove* (cooking chana masala and my Thai peanut sauce with veggies and lots of Ultimate Frisbee), so fasten your seatbelts and get ready for the ride.

* Slightly complicated by the heavy power rationing going on. Power was out for about 22 hours on Monday and Tuesday, for 12 hours on Wednesday and for 16 hours on Thursday. Might also make posting a bit more erratic as I work to find an internet connection and the like.

Sorry about this. I'm working through a backlog of posts and should be caught up to the present soon. In the meantime, enjoy some posts with pictures that I should have put up ages ago.

American Football

Sunday Frisbee in Arusha

Puppy 2.0

I spent a lot of time trying to get the pictures from the Frisbee tournament up here, but to no avail. Soon, hopefully

I set an alarm for the first time all week and woke up at 6:45. I gathered my things and left my duffle bag at the front desk at Upper Hill, while lugging a tote bag filled with charcoal briquetters to the matatu stage just up the road. I had an argument with a conductor who insisted on charging me 30 shillings for a 20 shilling ride, which put me in a bad mood. But then I hopped out and found Ben's apartment. I admired the view and it felt nice to feel the crisp morning air on his balcony. He was nice enough to let me store my briquetters under his bed* for two weeks until I get back to Nairobi.

We set off to the office. Ben works at iHub, so I was really excited to see this place after everything that I've heard about it. My favorite description is that it is Silicon Valley in a building (there are other spaces in the building besides iHub that enable it to serve a wide range of tech companies). As we walked in, I admired the decor of the room (chalkboards with notes scribbled, a huge wall map of Nairobi, a balcony with views in all directions and so on) and Ben bought me a chai from the coffeehouse there. I met some of his employees and got to see how things work at iHub. There was just so much energy in the atmosphere.

My phone had been giving me lots of trouble in Kenya, and so after 2 years of faithful service, I decided it was time to retire my trusty mobile phone and upgrade to a smartphone. I visited a phone store at the Yaya Centre, which had a wide selection and made it hard to choose . I'm excited about Android and the best part is that the phone has a camera, so it should be much easier for me to include pictures in my posts. I tried to learn as much as I possibly could about it, but unfortunately, the battery was pretty low in the phone so that had to be put off until later.

After that, I set off for City Centre and went over to the area where buses going to western Kenya leave from. I picked a company that seemed like it would be a good choice**, and they told me that they had a 1 PM shuttle*** heading to Kisumu. By the time the bus arrived at 2:15, most of us were a bit upset that they kept insisting that the bus would arrive on time (even after it was already late). So next time you're traveling to Kisumu, avoid Blueline Shuttles.

The ride was pretty low-key and I had plenty of time to admire the scenery. It was nearly 9 when we finally pulled into Kisumu and my phone battery was nearly dead (you would think I would know better by now, but then, there was a reason that I had bought a new phone). I called Jeff and Daniel (two friends from Peace Corps who have extended and are serving for their 3rd year in Kisumu) to get directions to their apartment. I couldn't quite get the whole idea (there aren't a lot of signs in their area, so they use abstract landmarks like "a shop that is made of those bags they sell charcoal in"), so I just had to take it on faith. I made it most of the way there and then hopped out of the tuk-tuk to roam around and ask people on the street if they knew where "the two white guys" lived. Everyone was very helpful and soon I found them waving to me.

I hadn't seen either of them in over a year, so we had a lot to catch up on. I wound up eating a bar of Weetabix for dinner (my stomach always feels a bit choppy after traveling, so this was actually a really clever solution) and we hung out until 2 in the morning.

* It's actually either a couch or a bench with a lot of cushions depending on who you ask. It's pretty amusing.

** There were a row of booking offices, and I wanted one with some people so that I wouldn't have to wait an eternity for the vehicle to fill, but few enough people that I wouldn't find myself crammed in somewhere.

*** A shuttle is a matatu with one less row of seats so that everyone gets a bit more legroom. It also usually doesn't have any goats or chickens on the floor. Probably my favorite mode of public transport.

I slept in once again, and decided to shift from the dorm to the tents at Upper Hill. Then I headed back to the Ghanaian High Commission one last time to collect my visa. I grabbed lunch at Java House and sat there reading my book for a while. I nearly left my passport, but a very friendly waiter grabbed me before I could abandon it.

I left myself a free afternoon to get caught up on internet tasks (including getting some fresh posts up here), and as I was looking for a cyber cafe, I ran into my friend Baraka (a breakdancer who used to hang out at our house all the time, but has been in Nairobi for the last 7 months) on the street. He was rushing off somewhere, but hopefully I'll see him in Arusha soon enough.

I spent a while in the internet cafe checking tasks off of my to do list. After that, I hopped a bus back to Upper Hill and waited for my friend Ben (also from the Unreasonable Institute) to give me a call. He was going to an Ethiopian restaurant called Smart Village, which was near Upper Hill, so I met him there. I shared a table with Ben and three girls who had gone to Brown who I didn't know. Our conversations wandered from place to place until we realized that we had been there for 4 hours. I was ready to walk back to Upper Hill (about 20 minutes), but they refused to let me. I was reluctant to take a taxi (I enjoy nighttime walks and hate feeling like living in fear only perpetuates Nairobi's reputation as a dangerous city*), but I ended up relenting. I also had to take a taxi that they knew, so rather than making a big deal over the fact that he was ripping me off ($5 for less than 2 km is rather absurd here), I had to pay what he asked. I was just glad to be in a tent and not faced with the noise in the dorm of people shuffling their bags starting at 5 in the morning.

* Not to say that the city isn't dangerous, but I feel like people try to make you feel unsafe, which really doesn't do anything for the reputation.

I slept in a bit and was glad for the extra sleep. I took the morning to take care of some work at Upper Hill. It was relaxing to be able to work with a puppy seated next to me.

Then I headed to town and got some passport photos and photocopies and printing done so that I could submit everything for my Ghanaian visa. I was rather frustrated as I tried to find a place where I could buy an overpriced tea and use free wireless to get some attachments from my email, but was unsuccessful*. I finally opted to use one of the pay per minute cyber cafes, which always makes me anxious as I watch the money tick with the clock (it'd be less stressful if the meter weren't on the screen the whole time). Then I went to the embassy and paid $110 and was told that it would be ready the next day and valid for 5 years. I better make it count, I guess.

After that, I took the matatu further up Limuru Road to the Village Market. This was my first time there, but it's strategic location near several embassies (including the US embassy) and UN buildings attracts a certain clientele. It had the only bowling alley I've seen so far in Africa (well, I've only been to 6 countries so far) and many other exotic shops. I wanted to take advantage of the free wireless internet in the food court, but I didn't realize that my battery was nearly dead and I couldn't find an outlet. I had already ordered some food from an Indian restaurant (it was delicious), so I read while I ate before heading back to Upper Hill (a very long process, as it was the start of rush hour traffic).

I dropped off my computer and went out to meet my friend Ari (he finished his Peace Corps service and now works in Nairobi). I walked about 10 minutes from the matatu stop to his house, which shocked him, since apparently one of his roommates had recently been robbed in that area. Well, I was fine at any rate. We talked for a bit before we went to a restaurant called Hashmi. There were lots of meat options on the menu (I would call it halal barbecue, but I don't think that's actually what people call it) and I wound up getting the mixed grill (a sort of meat sampler). I hadn't seen Ari in a year and a half, so we had plenty to catch up on. I learned lots about work in the refugee sector and had a delicious meal. Then we went outside to see if we could see the eclipse (we couldn't). He had just returned from a trip, so he went home to crash. I walked to my friend Maria's house.

It was already after 9, so walking was probably a bad decision once again, but I made it without event. We (Maria, Aisha and I) grabbed a taxi to a place called Brew Bistro and philosophized until 1 in the morning. It was amazing to drink different beer (I had a rich amber called Oktoberfest--a very nice change from Tusker). Then, I grabbed a taxi to Upper Hill and crashed.

* If you have suggestions in Nairobi, I'd be glad to hear them. I didn't find anything at Yaya, I know that Java House in Sarit has been out of late, though I didn't check at Dorman's.

I didn't have the most restful sleep, but I felt pretty energetic as I set out to tackle the day. I started at the University of Nairobi again and found the director there. I asked for five minutes of his time, which he said was the exact amount that he could spare (at one point he asked if I had made an appointment, to which I probably could have told him yes, but I admitted that I figured it would just be easier this way).

After that, I picked up a 107 matatu (which is apparently the same as 11B) and rode down Limuru Road. As we drove, I listened to a radio ad that told me that if I wanted better eyesight and stronger bones, I should eat more sugar--now fortified with vitamin A. I wasn't sure whether I should be impressed or worried about this nutrition strategy.

I hopped out where I saw the sign for the Ghanaian High Commission. I met a nice woman named Kate who was very helpful. She told me that the letter that I had received in Dar es Salaam was probably not going to help me to get into the country, but that it would suffice for the Tanzanians and Brit for whom I had obtained similar letters. I was relieved that it had worked out this way (I was dreading having to have them send their passports and find time to do all the processing) and felt once again how special being American can be. Sighhh.

I walked to a nearby supermarket where they had peach yogurt (how luxurious!) and made that my breakfast. I also discovered that my sunscreen had leaked all over my bag. Fortunately, it mostly just got on my laptop cord and a folder that I had and everything seems to be all right. I hopped on a matatu and after about two minutes, the rear tire blew out completely. The conductor changed it rather quickly and I was glad that the tire had blown in a nice scenic part of Nairobi instead of one of the many areas filled with dust, exhaust and other unpleasantness.

After that, I walked to Sarit Centre and decided to take advantage of their Tuesday movie deal*: 1 ticket + 1 hot dog + 1 popcorn + 1 soda for 450 shillings (just under $6). As it happens, Pirates of the Caribbean 4 was playing, so I got my first experience seeing a 3D movie. While I was very entertained by the movie, I found myself nearly as entertained by the 3D glasses and spent a lot of the movie playing with them to see what happens if you close one eye, or have one eye looking through the glasses and one without the glasses, or holding the glasses at different angles. The whole experience was a lot of fun.

After that, I ran across the street to Pizza Inn, which has a buy-one-get-one-free deal on pizzas every Tuesday. An important part of being a Peace Corps volunteer in Kenya is knowing the deals in Nairobi so that you make the most of your time there. (Also, there are tons of radio ads everyday in case you somehow forget about "Teriffic Tuesdays"). I felt more of my exhaustion melting away with the day and I was happy to head back to Upper Hill and have an easy evening.

I mostly sat and wrote a lot. My friend Sarah showed up later and we talked for a while. My sign language is pretty dismal these days (as my grandmother would say "you rest, you rust"), but I didn't let myself speak at all and she was patient as I misspelled most of what I was trying to finger-spell and then she would show me the word for what I was trying to say and she signed slow enough for me to get most of her meaning. We caught up for a bit and it was nice to talk to a Peace Corps volunteer who has readjusted to life in the states.

* This was my third trip to the movie theater since 2008. My last two trips were to see Inception and Harry Potter 7 Part 1.

Well, I'm here for relaxation, but of course I brought a bit of work with me. I did make sure to sleep in a bit before heading to town. I grabbed a yogurt at the supermarket and had a nice exotic breakfast (I don't know why there is so little yogurt in Arusha, but I'm going to eat lots of it while I'm here).

I first stopped by a shop where we have some of our GCS stock and found out that the dealer hadn't been able to sell a single product. Then again, it's hard to sell products that are completely hidden in some storage room. From there, I went to the University of Nairobi to visit the director of the FabLab. I wanted to talk with him about IDDS, and though he had told me he was pretty busy, I figured that I could grab him for five minutes since I've always found it best to communicate with him in person. Unfortunately, after waiting there for 2 hours, I decided I would try my luck a different day.

I grabbed a fruit salad from a street vendor which was delicious and then grabbed a matatu to go to the Ghanaian High Commission in Nairobi on Limuru Road. I had seen on the map that I wanted the 106, 107 or 108, but since I wasn't in City Centre, I figured that a 105 that said Limuru would probably get me pretty close. An hour later, I was well on my way out of Nairobi in an area called Limuru which is nowhere near Limuru Road. Oops. I wish there were some culprit for that besides my own stupidity.

Well, I was a bit frustrated at this point, so I decided to head to the Sarit Centre to grab a snack and use some wireless internet. Once I got there, I discovered that the internet was down (though it was nice to have a bagel for the first time in nearly a year) and was about to give up on everything when my friend Maria saw me there and made it her mission to get me out of my funk.

Maria was one of the fellows at the Unreasonable Institute with me last summer, so we had lots to catch up on. I met her intern Aisha (sp?) and saw her apartment. We sat down for tea and swapped stories from the past year and hen we got into a long talk about business models and by the end I was feeling a lot better. She even let me use her internet to send off some emails (I'm going to be pretty far behind on those for most of this vacation). After that, I grabbed a matatu back to Upper Hill feeling a bit worn out, but generally positive about everything.

Leaving Arusha was quite a process as I tried to get all of my tasks done (I didn't) before I take a 2 week vacation (well, I brought work with me, but I'm definitely in my vacation mindset). I finished my work at the office at 2:30 AM on Sunday morning, and Jodie convinced me that I would be better off taking the afternoon shuttle. Definitely good advice, considering I was already sleep-deprived and hadn't packed yet.

So I slept in on Sunday morning, packed everything that I'll need over the next two months (hopefully*) including some rather unwieldy charcoal briquetters. When I get on my flight, I'm a little worried I will have to wear 5 or 6 layers so that I can carry everything. Oh well, at least I won't be carrying everything around Kenya while I'm here.

I said my good-byes and hopped on the 2 PM shuttle (brilliant advice, Jodie). I napped, but we made it to the border right at 4, so I was pretty impressed with the pace that we kept. I had no problem with the Tanzanian side of the border, but when I got to the Kenyan side of the border, they told me that my 3 month Kenyan visa that I had purchased 1.5 months ago was not valid. They explained that since I have a Tanzanian residence permit in my passport, any time that I cross the border (even if I go to Uganda), my Kenyan visa becomes invalidated. It sounded like a pretty made-up rule to me, so I intend to research that a bit. Either way, it seems like some pretty bizarre fine print. And a good way to discourage people like me** from coming to Kenya.

Well, I was a bit irritated by that rule, but it did feel really good to finally arrive back in Nairobi. I headed to Upper Hill Campsite where I ran into one of my friends who served in Peace Corps with me and we caught up a bit when we saw another familiar face. It turns out my friend Sarah (one of the Deaf Education volunteers who is herself deaf) is also back in Kenya and traveling around a bit, so we all caught up and I expect I'll see Sarah a few more times on the trip.

* Actually, I already know that I forgot my dress shoes. Well, I can always make presentations in sneakers, right?

** And by that, I mean expatriates who have lots of friends in Kenya but are working in Tanzania.

So my last week in Arusha was a bit crazy. I had a lot to finish up, and a lot of people to say good-bye to before I left, so I was definitely running around a bit.

On Thursday at Frisbee, I said my first round of good-byes, though since most of the players are Tanzanian, it was just a good-bye-for-two-months. Then on Friday, I played poker at my friend Shannon's house, which was a good way to wind-down after everything I was trying to wrap-up at the office. Saturday we cooked chapati burritos (I don't think we'd had them since January), which was delicious and a good final meal in Arusha.

After that, we went to a show at Via-Via to raise money for the Umoja Centre. My friends Rose and Claire work at the Umoja Center teaching youths who have dropped out of high school skills like English, performing arts, self-defense (actually, that's our friend Tara who isn't officially affiliated there), and a wide range of other programs. The past two years, some students from Juilliard have come to support the performing arts program, so the show was a nice fusion of Tanzanian and American performances. I was a bit mortified by the lighting situation*, but other than that, it was a wonderful performance. Then they opened up the dance floor and we all went crazy for about an hour before I had to run around and say good-bye to everyone before heading out. It was nice that so many people were all together in the same place so that I could say it all at once.

I will say that I'm really excited to be out of Arusha. Although I have lots of friends there, I felt more and more stressed in recent weeks and knew that a break was the healthiest option. I feel a little bad leaving some of my friends who are going through hard times right now, but I had reached the point where I couldn't offer much support.

Anyway, I'll be back in Arusha some time in August, but in the meantime, I expect to have lots of travel adventures to put up here.

* There was virtually no front lighting or side lighting, and in the back, there were 4 lights that change colors according to the levels of the music. Makes sense when you're playing techno. Not so much for opera...

I took my day a bit more slowly. I woke up without an alarm (so refreshing to do that every once in a while) and set out back to the Ghanaian consulate. I was there in just over half an hour this time (or 1/8 the time it took the day before) and collected everything. As it happens, the consulate cannot issue visas (I knew this in advance), but instead issues a letter that allows you to get your visa when you enter in Accra (in most circumstances, you cannot get your Ghanaian visa in Accra). As I read the letter, I wasn't entirely assured that it would take care of everything. It was signed and stamped by the Ghanaian consul, which is a good sign (I think, anyway, the man in the office when I was there was definitely Tanzanian, so I am taking it on faith that this is all above board with the folks in Ghana). But really, all it said was that he had read all of my documentation and believed that I was going to Ghana for my stated purpose.

I couldn't really do anything about it at that point, so I shifted my attention ot my next objective which was visiting some shops in Dar to get price quotes for GCS. Jodie told me that I was looking for Jamhuri Street, which I had walked past several times the day before, so it was pretty easy to walk down the road until I saw the shops. I was grateful after my adventure from the day before to find my target so easily. Then I was waiting for a phone call (I wasn't positive that my phone would ring, I had tried to contact him for several months over phone and email and only got one or two responses, but this time, he had said he would call, and I even contacted his assistant and a co-worker to make sure that he would in fact call), so I went back to the shawarma place that I had discovered the day before and grabbed some lunch while I waited.

Right as I was finishing, I got the phone call and he told me to come to Oyster Bay and meet him at his office. I figured that since I was near the post office, I could get a bus there that would go in the right direction. Unfortunately, a few different people told me that I wanted different buses, but finally, the conductor of a purple bus told me that he could drop me at the Oyster Bay police station. I stood in a cramped aisle on the bus for some distance, and when I finally made it into a seat, I asked the gentleman next to me if we had nearly arrived at the Oyster Bay police station, and he told me that we had passed it quite a while back. I asked the conductor and he sheepishly admitted that he had forgotten about me. He was nice enough to only charge me for as far as I had wanted to go instead of how far I had gone. It didn't make me any less upset with him.

Then, I got on a bus heading back toward the Oyster Bay police station. My contact called me and asked what was taking so long and then asked to speak to my driver. I explained that I wasn't in a taxi (another luxury item that is generally not part of my travel budget) and asked the man next to me where we were. My contact said that I was really far from him and that he had to leave and wouldn't be able to meet with me. Then he told me that he was really disappointed, since he had really wanted to meet with me. I was really mad at that, since I might have actually paid for a taxi if he had ever given me the sense that he did in fact want to talk to make sure this meeting happened. In this case, it felt like he was trying to put the blame on me, and I really didn't need that.

Anyway, I headed back to my hotel. I decided to walk most of the way, since it was rush hour at that point. I picked a bus and discovered that I was keeping pace with it for the better part of an hour. When it finally started moving, I decided to hop on a bus to get back to my guest house. I wanted to treat myself to a nice dinner, but my options were pretty limited, so I just grabbed a snack from one of the street vendors and called that dinner.

The next morning I was on the 8 AM bus back to Arusha. It was a pretty easy trip, though we had to deal with a lot of traffic in Dar and didn't get in until just before 7 PM. Mic told me that was a ridiculously slow pace and almost as if to prove his point, he drove to Dar a few days later and on his return trip, he left at 6 AM and made it home by 12:30 PM.

This story takes place at the end of May right after this. Just pretend I posted it in a timely manner.

My entire purpose in Dar was to visit the Ghanaian consulate--located in the NSSF building--to submit visa applications for myself and four colleagues in Arusha (1 Brit and 3 Tanzanians) to go to Ghana this summer for IDDS. My first morning in Dar, I decided to walk to an NSSF building near my hotel to see if I could get more information on finding the one with the Ghanaian consulate. Unfortunately, the woman behind the help counter looked at me like I had 3 1/2 heads, so I was about to head out when I saw that one of the occupants of the building was an NGO that had visited us in Arusha. I paid the Tanzanian Renewable Energy Association (TAREA*) a visit and talked a lot about the rather severe power rationing we had been experiencing the past few weeks (definitely makes a case for some of the renewables that they have).

After that, I walked out and found a motorcycle driver and told him that I was looking for the NSSF Building on Sokoine Road, near the airport (that was the full extent of instructions that I had for my destination). He asked some of the guys near the stand for directions and when he felt like he knew where we were going, we set off. I discovered that traffic in Dar is pretty miserable, even at 9:30 in the morning. Fortunately, my driver was an expert in weaving through the traffic and we made pretty good time. As we broke through the traffic, the clouds also broke and we found ourselves getting rather wet. We found the airport, but no NSSF building. A man on the road pointed us in the other direction and we soon found a nice NSSF building, and felt we were in the right place. I paid the driver 7000 shillings (about $4.50) for all his trouble (probably a bit generous, but I clearly had no idea where I was going and I was grateful that he didn't try to take advantage of me or anything)**. It had stopped raining at this point, but it rained on and off through the afternoon.

The NSSF office was very helpful and told me that I was in the wrong area. They tried to give me directions, but their landmarks weren't very helpful, so finally they told me to go to the Central Post Office and go to the big NSSF building near there. I thanked them and was relieved that I finally knew where I was going (mostly). I walked down the street trying to hop on one of the city buses (so much nicer than the daladalas in Arusha) to get to the post office. It took a bit of patience, but I got to walk around and see that part of the city a bit before I finally found a bus that had space and embarked on my journey to the post office.

When I got there, I asked the bus driver to point me toward the NSSF building and I thanked him. I hopped off and started walking down the street that he indicated. I asked someone for directions there, who pointed me in the opposite direction. This set in motion a chain of events where I asked probably 30 people for directions to the NSSF building (I was really specific and told them that I was trying to find "the big one").

I got a bit mad at one point when I was trying to walk down the street and a gentleman coming in the opposite direction blocked my path. I tried to go my left and he tried to go to his right. Then I tried to go to my right and he tried to go to his left. Only, he did this each time about 2 seconds after me and was clearly trying to block my path. I have to assume that this was partially related to the second gentleman who was reaching into my pocket at the time. Fortunately, I had nothing in that pocket and felt mostly pity that these two men had chosen a line of work where neither one of them was particularly adept.

After nearly 2 hours of this madness, I found myself back at the start and I asked a security guard for directions and he said "oh, near the police station?" and I remembered that as one of the landmarks that they had offered me when I was at the NSSF building near the airport. I thanked him and hurried down a road that I had already walked down three times. I made a turn that I had walked past and found the police station and clearly saw a building that said NSSF Waterfront House. Turns out that if I had said Waterfront, pretty much anyone would have known what i was talking about, but NSSF was lost on at least half of them (actually, that's not true--there were at least 3 NSSF offices in the area, so I'm pretty sure that people could have pointed me in any direction and I would have found an NSSF building pretty quickly). I was so overjoyed at finding it that I found a nice local restaurant and had some chicken and fries for lunch (a good way to replenish some energy).

I submitted all the paperwork and the officer told me to come back the next day to collect everything. After the four hour ordeal of trying to find the consulate, I knew that the best thing to do was to head back to my guest house and crash. I walked a little way and was clearly lost again when a friendly gentleman pointed me toward a bus that would get me back there. As I walked, I saw a place that was advertising shawarma, so I knew I had to stop in and take advantage. The chicken shawarma was amazing and I felt a lot better about everything that I had seen over the course of the day. It was good that I was feeling so positive, since the traffic to get back to my guest house was a nightmare.

I stopped at a huge hotel*** to use some internet and get caught up on emails. I also took advantage of the setting to get some fresh juice. Then I wandered back to my guest house and had a nice greasy dinner before crawling back to my room. I was pretty impressed with all that I had seen over the day and was ready for the pace to slow down.

* I'm assuming that there weren't any Spanish speakers in the room when they chose that acronym.

** To put it in perspective, while we were riding, his chain was rattling, so we stopped at a mechanic's shop for 5-10 minutes to have everything tightened, and the driver paid 1000 shillings for that.

*** Hotel is code for nice place. Guest house usually means really crappy place. Since I'm a budget traveler, I almost never stay in hotels.

I am safely in Kenya and enjoying myself. I am seeing lots of friends and having lots of adventures that I'll put up here soon. The main challenge has been internet, so I'm going to try to schedule a series of posts to fill you in on everything that's been going on.

Hope you're all enjoying yourselves as well :)

Don't worry, I'll be back here in August. On Sunday, I'm heading up to Kenya where I'll spend two weeks (with a sidetrip to Uganda in there) before heading to Ghana for IDDS. I'm going to do my best to get the rest of my Dar adventure up here as well as some pictures of various adventures soon, when the blog may fall into hibernation.

However, the fact that I have stayed up past 5:30 and not bothered to get medicine for the worms that are likely living in my intestinal tract right now should probably indicate how crazy things have been as I try to get everything wrapped up. Just bear with me here. But first I'm going to grab a nap before people arrive at the office.

After my eventful trip, my time to Morogoro was pretty uneventful. Company training took up most of my time. We had to spend a while searching for a hotel with a room that could hold all of us for the training. Finally we settled on a place that was still under construction and had the training there. It was nice checking out the half finished upper floors and admiring the view of the gorgeous hills outside Morogoro. It was not as nice breathing in the paint fumes every day.

Anyway, after the training finished, I walked through Morogoro with our Sales Manager, Wema, for a meeting and then I walked to the other side of town to grab a bus to Dar es Salaam (or Dar for short). I enjoyed walking the town to get a sense of it and I was surprised how big it felt there. I got to the bus station and found a bus that was about to pull out, so I hopped right on. Morogoro is pretty hot this time of year, so even the five minutes sitting in the parking lot before we set out was enough for most of us on the bus to break a sweat.

The bus ride was uneventful and I was relieved to get in a little before 5. This was my first trip to Dar and I didn't know my way around. I picked the direction where the big hotels were and figured there would also be some smaller (read cheaper) guest houses in the area as well. I zigzagged for a little over 2 hours and the only guest house that I found was booked up. As darkness set in, my luck changed and I found a bar that had a dozen rooms in the back. It was 10,000 Tanzanian shillings (about $6.50) per night and was self-contained (the Tanzanian way of saying "en suite"). It didn't have things like toilet paper, towels or soap, but I've learned by now to travel with them.

I found a little restaurant down the road that was a nice local joint. I figured that since I was finally on the coast, I had better order some fish. Unfortunately, it was the same type and freshness of fish that I get in Arusha, but it didn't taste nearly as good. Then I walked back to my guest house and discovered that the bar stayed open until 1 with music playing. Once they closed down I drifted into a nice deep sleep to get ready for my upcoming adventure in Dar.

**** Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman by Richard Feynman - This is just an all around fun read. Richard Feynman's memoirs tell the story of a man who has had lots of crazy adventures throughout his life. I especially liked the part where he was talking about his adventures picking locks and cracking safes.

He is best known for his successes in physics (he even talks about how burdensome his Nobel prize was in that field), but it was pretty interesting to learn about his exploits in biology, drawing, drumming and apparently lots of different stories about picking up women. I remember talking about him in college in one of my history classes (well, we talked about him in several of my physics classes as well) because of his interest in the culture of Tuva and especially the throat singers* in that region (they can produce two notes at one time, which is interesting from a physics perspective and also produces a remarkable sound). Unfortunately, that area of interest for him was not even mentioned in the book.

In any case, the writing is better than the writing of most physicists I've read, but it's not great writing. Still, it's definitely an easy and worthwhile read.

* I've only heard proper throat singing in a live setting once, and that was when Nripal demonstrated for us at the IDDS talent show last year. It truly is amazing.

My friend Liz just sent me a message saying that a friend of hers had mailed a box from Zambia that finally arrived in the US today, only six months later. I laughed at her. Then shortly after, I got an email from a customer who had ordered a product from us last autumn. She said that it arrived today. I remember putting the box in the mail on October 4. So that's 240 days to ship a box from Tanzania to the US. That means that during that whole time, the package was moving at an average of 1.37 miles per hour. Yikes.