A Month in Morogoro – Tanzania

I’m getting into the daily routine. Get to work, work, after work.  The short rainy season – Nov-Dec has started so now is it is cooler and very wet. I bought a mountain bike to get around. I rode into the farm today and got soaked, but it is warm so it’s fine.  The main rainy season starts in March and goes through till end of June. How very Canadian of me to start with comments about the weather 🙂

I am involved with a couple of interesting projects. Cassava is currently being grown and dried in the Kigoma region in western Tanzania as whole tubers, much of which is sold in Rwanda, Burundi, Uganda and elsewhere for processing into flour and they also make beer out of it. The quality of the tubers can be vastly improved through better drying systems and storage. Currently, cassava producers’ dry cassava tubers by laying them out on the ground in rows under direct sunlight. So there is a lot of rot when they do this. 

I am writing a concept note seeking interest and funding for a project where we will use solar greenhouses with racks to dry cassava. Effective drying would improve the value of the product and provide additional income to cassava farmers, increase employment for women and youth in processing and potentially create many additional opportunities along the cassava value chain for Tanzanians. We are also developing effective systems to remove and dry the peels which can add value and provide an additional source of income for current and new participants in the cassava value chain.  Dried peels can be used to make animal feed, fertilizer and as a charcoal binder. 

I’m also working with a young entrepreneur here who is developing irrigation systems and I am developing a project to automate irrigation on this farm and prove the young entrepreneur  an opportunity  to show case and test his equipment. 

And just became part of a team to implement a project with the UNDP to train and support 400 farmers in Kigoma region. Kigoma Region is on Lake Tanganyika which borders with the Democratic Republic of Congo, Burundi and Zambia.

There are a few expats around doing interesting things. Last weekend we hiked up to a waterfall and met an American woman who is working at the university here training rats to find victims in earthquakes. Next week I’m going to volunteer to be a subject for the rats to find. They will hide me and the rats will come and look for me. See the links the rats walk around with little backpacks with cameras. Check out these links.

https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/24/world/search-and-rescue-rats-apopo-hnk-spc-intl/index.html

https://youtu.be/vxO2XE6EDrQ?si=PkODAH_4bsE4lA_i

Wifi and power is sporadic and unreliable. Recently with one of the power outages – which occur mostly every day and usually for a minimum of 6 hours, the the farm people  hooked up a generator to the building to get power by sticking wires from the generator into a light socket (see pic below), which usually works but this time there was a power surge from the generator and all kind of devices got fried, including the wireless router. The power is out today and the generator is roaring in the background and the power seems stable although I am constantly watching where my computer is plugged in. Last week one of the other CUSO volunteers had her phone charging and I happened to be looking at the plug and her chord started smoking. Yikes. 

My biggest challenge is learning Swahili so this has to be my next focus. Now that I have started with some projects I need to get back to the books and develop some language skills. It will be a richer experience if I do so. Maybe more effective too.

Some recent pics.