The 2nd Summer of 2009

The last few days in Tabora, we’ve been getting into a decent routine with work and weekends! The weather here is really really hot between about 11 and 4 – literally 20 seconds in the sun and you can feel your skin baking!

We’ve met some really interesting people here in the last few days – both through work and hanging out at the Orion hotel.

We toured a textile company here last week – the only big industry in Tabora. It was fascinating to see how bales of cotton come in, get mixed and then spun into yarn. They export most of it. There’s a huge market for second hand clothes here though we’re not yet sure where they come from. I’m not sure if these were things people donated in other countries or not. This explains the guy in the IU baskeball tshirt we saw! I found it a bit surprising to learn that a lot of cotton gets exported to India and then imported as cloth! Same with the roof tiles on our house – “made in Bangalore”. I haven’t yet figured out how it’s cheaper to import these things rather than produce them here, right where the raw materials are.

We met Ashok at the Orion who was a bit cynical about the work that all of us were doing here (including the 4 doctors and the 2 teachers). He said he’s seen many like us before and all we do is create hope but no long lasting change. I hope he’s wrong. He’s a third generation immigrant from India and from our multiple conversations, he seems like he’s tried very hard to make various ideas succeed here but with little luck.

He told us about how he went to Vietnam to learn how to grow Artemisia plants which are used to cure malaria. (Side note: one variety of Artemisia is tarragon!) He returned to Uganda and eventually convinced 6000 farmers to grow the stuff. The leaves are converted into a raw powder and then a refined powder, which is used to produce the actual drug. According to him, a thousand kilos of leaves yields about 4 kilos of refined powder that could be sold for a $1,000 per kilo.

Ashok had teamed up with CIPLA in India to set up a processing facility in Uganda to convert the powder into the actual drug thereby keeping the raw materials close to the drug production site and keeping them close to the markets in which they would be distributed. Low shipping costs and more revenue for African farmers.

However, the Global Health Fund (GHF) which buys up all these drugs and then provides them to malaria endemic countries, only buys the drugs from WHO certified companies. And this Ugandan company wasn’t certified. (Apparently, very few are – the likes of GlaxoSmithK & Novartis).
Meanwhile, the western world had to subsidize pharmaceutical companies in order to convince them to produce anti-malaria drugs. Additionally, thanks to an increase in production of the crop in China, the prices fell sharply – 85% by Ashok’s estimate.

With all these factors going against him, the facility they set up went out of business and they had 6000 unhappy farmers on their hands. That’s that.

Stories like this, along with the many solutions we’ve heard about in the last few weeks makes me think that ultimately the people of these lands have solutions to their problems but they either get lost in the complex world of donors and paperwork or they find no voice at all.
The Millennium Villages Project is a great example of how package interventions which support and involve the local community in resource allocation, can work. On Wednesday, we went to see a dispensary, a school and a well in the MV cluster here. Here’s a picture of the well we visited. More on this trip later.

Last weekend was a big weekend of reading, clubbing, and sport.

On Friday after work, I went to play soccer with some of the kids that Zach works with and Perminder and Elisa joined as well. Not a single kid was wearing shoes and they ran up and down the sandy and sometimes rocky field with ease. They were all pretty good at soccer, but I managed a bit of glory as I scored a goal. I mean, come on, I can’t let a bunch of 12 year olds make me look bad no matter the sport. Shoes or no shoes.

After the game, I found some kids playing basketball nearby so I stopped and played with them for about an hour. They play everyday in the evening, so I think some of us guys are going to start playing a couple times a week. There were a couple of decent players, so we should be able to get some good games. I think many of them were surprised to see a white boy on the court when they walked up. The ball no longer had any leather on it, the backboards were wooden, and the rims were made by a local metal worker. Pretty rough conditions, but it was good to see that basketball is being played.

All day Saturday and Sunday was spent reading. I nearly finished two books which is probably more than I’ve read in two days in my entire life. We just never get days like that back home. Instead of watching 10 hours of football, I got to spend that time reading. It might be ok to change it up for a few months, but I will be very happy to have football back when I get home.

Saturday night we had a big night at the Orion Hotel and then headed over to Club Royale for a long night of dancing. Club Royale is the big hangout and dance club for the young people in Tabora. It was actually not as shady as I imagined and our taxi driver Freddy escorted us there and gave us some credibility once inside. We had a blast dancing and it was funny because they played terrible rap and dance music from probably 5 years ago. It was a flashback to the table dancing in 26 sophomore year. All the beer here is pretty poor quality malt beer, so a hangover the next day is guaranteed even after only a couple beers.

Sunday was a big day for me. I finally had to get a haircut, so I had Elisa buzz it off for me with some clippers that they brought. We have some before and after shots from the haircut that I will post shortly. I think it looks better than expected, or at least everybody is saying it doesn’t look too bad…too late now.

I couldn’t help singing songs from the Lion King all weekend when we were in Katavi (much to the annoyance of my fellow safarians I’m sure!) The trip to Katavi was definitely one of the greatest experiences of my life! Cameron’s blog post does a great job describing what we did! The walking safari was out of this world!!

Here are some pictures! I brought along S’s super sweet camera with a not-so-perfect-for-safari lens. I’m still learning how to use it and hopefully I’ll be some good by the time I come back. Some of the pictures are amazing! And then Dr. P lent me his awesome lens and I took some good shots with that. I have all these instructions on how to use the camera on my computer and I’ve been meaning to read them….will get around to it one of these days I hope….

Anyways, here they are.

Dr. N took 2000 pictures on the weekend! I need to get hers – they’re on face book and she tagged me in a bunch of them. She got one of a tsetse fly – let me tell you about these interesting bloodsuckers. They are innocent looking flies that can cause sleeping sickness – incurable disease. They are really attracted to blue (luckily, we had Cameron wearing a blue shirt on the Safari so he attracted all of them for us!!) Nasty creatures. The park had blue flags everywhere and the guide told us it was to attract the flies from the safari cars as they drive by. The flags are treated with some chemical. Pretty clever I thought!
One of my favorite moments was when a group of giraffe, probably startled after we walked by the forested area they were hiding in, ran out into the savannah behind us. We all stared at each other for a while and then they ran back into the forest.
It was grand to watch!
Great weekend in Katavi!!
Last night, no electricity – Cameron made dinner “Cafeteria surprise”! Noodles with tuna fish mixed in some cream cheese and tinned mixed vegetables. No comment.

Friday morning we left Tabora and drove to Katavi National Park for a long weekend. Dr. Ruth suggested that we visit Katavi while in Tabora, so we have now seen the Park and the Dr. Livingstone museum in our first two weekend…looks like we may some long weekends ahead. The Municipal Director loaned us his Land Cruiser and a driver for the trip and we squeezed in Tanya, myself, the 4 doctor’s, and Zach. The drive is about 8 hours on extremely bumpy roads of sand and dirt. We stopped every couple hours to get out and stretch and rotate who sat in the back.

We stayed at the Hippo Garden Lodge just outside of the park and it turned out to be a real gem. It is a campsite type set up with about 10 individual houses with 1 or 2 bedrooms and a bathroom. Surprisingly we actually had western toilets, running and even hot water sometimes to shower. We didn’t think the name Hippo Garden meant much until we arrived. No more than 50 yards from the Lodge was a big water hole created by a slowly flowing river filled with more than 50 hippos. We could walk down to the waters edge and watch them for hours. Unfortunately they were noisy all night and it was a little tough to sleep…that and the ants and bed bugs in the beds, but we are in Africa. The food at the lodge was great and the service was the best we have had in Tanzania. Every Sunday night, the lodge has music and dancing so we got to enjoy the local culture of music and dance and we had fun trying to join in on the dancing.

The park was absolutely stunning. It’s impossible to capture it in picture. The sky goes on forever and the plains are so vast you can essentially see for miles and miles. The dry season is coming to an end, so it is a great time to see the animals as they have come down to the plains to try and get the last of the food and water. It was difficult to imagine much of the land we saw would be flooded and create lakes when the rains come. We saw many giraffe, hippos, crocs, buffalo, zebra, impala, bucks, monkeys, birds, warthogs, and a few elephants and hyena. The only thing we weren’t able to see was lions, but there are a lot of lions in the park.

The first day, we did a driving safari and we rented a safari vehicle to have a guide drive us around. 5 of us went in the safari vehicle with the guide and 2 rode in the Land Cruiser with our driver. On the drive to the park we saw many giraffe coming down from the higher ground to the plain. I really didn’t know what to expect from the safari, but everything really exceeded my expectations. Once in the park, every corner we turned there were animals. We only saw two other cars the whole day, so the animals were undisturbed and we essentially had the park to ourselves. So often we would drive up within seemingly an arms length from a giraffe. We were in the park for about 10 hours and we covered about 60 miles.

The second day we did a walking safari in a different part of the park. We had a guide with a rifle in case any of the animals got too close. We walked 8 miles over the course of about 4 hours on the edge of what will be Lake Katavi when the rains come. It was a huge plain with most of the animals we saw the day before. It was incredible to be essentially walking among these great animals. They generally would retreat to the forest when they saw us walking up, but we did have one pretty close encounter with a loan buffalo that turned at us from less than 50 yards away. Our guide loaded his rifle and the buffalo got the clue and retreated. He said he has only had to shoot his gun a couple times. Later, I was walking well ahead of the group and got within about 25 yards of a loan warthog and was a bit nervous as he crossed ahead of me…the guide was pretty far behind me. I was also able to walk up on a huge herd of buffalo that were laying down for a nap. As I was coming up over a small hill all I could see was one buffalo standing up and a huge flock of birds that appeared to be on the ground. As I continued walking I saw that it was the birds on the backs of this huge herd that was lying down. As the others joined the buffalo got up and ran off. It was an amazing sight. We did not encounter another single visitor on the second day, and it was so great to seemingly have the park to ourselves. The walking safari is the coolest thing I have ever done. It was truly the highlight of my trip to Katavi.

A few various tidbits from the weekend…it was the first time our driver had been on a safari, so it was his first time to see most of the animals which was really cool…we saw a guy walking around in Mpanda (which is the main town near the park) wearing an IU basketball t-shirt…we saw hippos having sex.

We left early Monday morning, and the ride home was brutal as everyone was exhausted and road seemed to be much bumpier than we remembered. It was an odd feeling to arrive back in Tabora and feel as if we were home.

Sorry for not keeping up on the blog this week, but life in Tabora is just not too exciting. We have a pretty set routine and it is difficult to move around at night without a taxi (which is not always so reliable). I don’t think I will ever complain again about the lunch and dinner spots when we are in places like Saginaw and Little Rock. Here, we honestly have 4 places to eat and they are both our dinner and lunch spots. A lady from work has come to cook for us twice this week, so we have had some good homemade meals and lots of leftovers. The only problem is that we don’t let her cook meat, so I am unwillingly becoming a vegetarian, although you might too after seeing the meat in the marketplace. The Cliff bars are becoming my main source of protein when we don’t eat out. I think I am going to eat the whole tenderloin from Costco when I get back.

We had our first walk of shame on Sunday morning…well not really, but that is what it felt like. It would be awesome if the people in Tabora who saw us walking home assumed it was a walk of shame just as we would assume. We got stranded at the doctor’s house on Saturday evening after watching a move because our normal taxi drivers had retired for the evening. Because of the mosquitoes, you can’t just pass out on the couch, so we had to set up a bed for Tanya out of couch cushions and rigged up a mosquito net for her. Nic let me sleep in her bed and she slept with Elisa…we made sure to keep it very proper for the girls. Not an ideal situation, but it worked. Funny thing, it was probably the best night of sleep I’ve had yet because they don’t have roosters running around their yard like we do.

The highlight of the week had to be last Sunday evening. Tanya and I attended the Baptist church of our neighbors, Tim and Kim. They are very old school, southern Baptists and very awesome people, but I warned Tanya ahead of time that it would be a different experience than Steve’s church we attended in Dar. We went to church Sunday evening because the pastor who is visiting was going to be preaching and he only speaks English. We may try to attend a Swahili sermon later on, but we didn’t want to jump in too quickly.

I think this was probably also my first time attending a southern Baptist service, and because stereotypes are stereotypes because they are true, they preached to everyone on accepting Christ and being saved or going to hell (well not just that, but that was of course part of the message). Well this was quite different than the freely giving message we heard in Dar, and I don’t think Tanya (or I for that matter) knew what to make of it. The preachers approached us each separately afterwards to continue their spiel. It is pretty funny looking at the situation from afar…Tanya was raised Muslim, so it is quite comical that these guys take the approach of preaching this way and just assuming she is going to convert on the spot. Luckily she is pretty tough and we can laugh about it now, but I think she was initially quite shocked.

We got the official blackout schedule for Tabora. We are without power all day on Saturday from 9am to 6pm and on Tuesday evening from 6pm to 11pm. Apparently because we live in the posh part of town, we lose our lights in the evening one night less than the other neighborhoods. We had a nice romantic candle light dinner of rice, samosas, and The Soprano’s on Tuesday night.

I got to watch the Colt’s game on Monday night at Tim’s house which was awesome. I caught the whole second half. They replay the Sunday and Monday night games one night later here, so I should be able to get in my share of football. My fantasy football team is getting killed though…I think everybody decides to have the week of their life when they play me…give me a break, I’m trying to play from Africa.

I have started running with David and Zach in the evenings. We have a nice little track that takes us about 35 minutes, and David is training for the London marathon, so I should be able to get in pretty good shape.

We are going with the doctor’s (from Britain) and Zach (from Portland) to Kitave National Park this weekend to do a safari for two days so we should have quite an adventure to tell. We are taking off early tomorrow morning (Friday) and are returning Monday evening. We are taking our boss’ Land Cruiser, and though he is making a pretty penny off of us, it should be a much better ride than the train. Apparently there are no paved roads between Tabora and Kitave, so we have 400 km each way ahead of us on gravel and dirt road. The wildlife at Kitave is supposed to be amazing and has very few visitors per year, so we are expecting an awesome time. We should some great photos to post when we return.