Zanzibar

I just wanted to try to put up some pictures of our trip through Zanzibar last week. These pictures don't come close to doing justice to the beauty of this place, but maybe it will give you a little peak at some of the things we saw and experienced...

This is a picture from the ferry as we arrive in Stone town. Some of the bluest water I've ever seen in my life.

Each night local fishermen set up tables like this in the park. All kinds of sea food like lobster, fish, crab, even octopus could be found.

This is the House of Wonders. It got this name because it was the first house in Zanzibar to have running water and electricity.

After Stone Town, Michael and I drove through the Jozani Forest where we got to see the Red Colobus Monkeys. The monkeys would let you get right up close, and there was a whole family of them hopping around the bushes all around us. It was pretty wild.

QUick Update

On Friday, Will and I arrived in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania via Uganda Air. In Kampala, people often joke about the inefficiency of the many systems. I have to say that Ugandans do a much better job when it comes to customs. It was a bit scary clearing customs in Dar es Salaam. An officer took our passports, visa money, and put it in a stack with about 10 others. We then waited for our names to be called. It seemed as if everybody was being called but us. After what seemed to be an hour (it was probably closer to 30-45 minutes but because they had taken our passports away, it created angst, at least for me.). Finally, we were released from the holding area, picked up our luggage, and took a taxi to a hotel - the Safari Inn. It cost us $30 for both of us to stay the night, which was a great deal. 

After setting down our stuff, we walked to the ferry dock to buy tickets to go to Zanzibar the next day. Then we had a taxi take us to the largest market in Tanzania and then to see the coastline. As we drove to the coast, I noticed that all the ambassadors to different countries live on compounds near the coast. One of these days, I am going to have to get myself an ambassadorship!  

On Saturday, we woke up early to take a ferry to Zanzibar. It was a 1 1/2 hour ride. We found beanbags to sit on at the back of the boat. The ride was delightful. pictures cannot capture the beauty of the blue water. The entrance into Zanzibar is dramatic. Unlike Dar es Salaam, the buildings in Stone Town - the island's capitol - are reflective of the original architecture, which is influenced my the many regimes that have had a stake in the countries history - Arab, Indian, and Portuguese. The above picture, not taken by me, should give you an idea. We will upload our own pictures when we arrive in Kampala. 

We took a tour of the city on Saturday then ate at a park on the coast, which comes alive with street vendors at night. We ate seafood, and I had a Zanzibar Pizza (a chapatti made into a pie like thing with an omelette inside - sort of like a rolex in Kampala but not) On Sunday, we went on a spice tour. This involved gong to a community that grows all sorts of spices as a way to generate money for the village. It was amazing to hear about how each of the different spices were used for food and then also medicines. We recieved all sorts of clothing made from leaves as well. For instance, they made us sunglasses from Pineapple leaves and a tie from long leaves. 

On Sunday night, our tour guide invited us to dine at his mothers home as a way to show us typical Swahili living. His mother made us beans, prawns in coconut sauce, chapatti and a local type of bread. It was delicious. We ate on the floor and without utensils. My whole life I have been told by my grandparents and parents that I eat too much with my hands so I thought that I would be really good at eating without a fork; however, it proved more difficult than I expected. 

Yesterday, we checked out of our hotel in Stone Town. We went to the Jozani Forrest and to swim with dolphins - both very exciting and fun. Then, we checked into a hotel in Jambiani, which is on the east coast. The beach is majestic. Today, I am working on writing my service learning curriculum. I cannot think of a better way to do this than  sitting outside looking out at the clear blue sea. 

- Feldman 

On Saturday night, Will, Nicholas (from EAC not T4T), and I went to The National Theater to see the Tabu Flo Dance troupe perform a show called The Myth of the Night Dancers. Night dancers are one of the oldest myths in Uganda. They are men and women who are normal during the day and then at night wake up possessed. They find dead bodies to eat and do all sorts of other crazy things. The great part about the show was that it was all told using modern and traditional dance. The cast was amazing at break dancing. It was extremely entertaining and at times hilarious. I am so happy that Agie suggested we go.

 

On Sunday, Will and I went to the EAC house to see the students perform. We are lucky that Jeremy's family is in town to warrant the organizing of such an event. As always, EAC's students delivered with great energy and passion. During one particular number, I could just tell that they were having a great time. It is always great to sense this from performers.

 

On the subject of the Spirit of Uganda, this week EAC released tour dates http://empowerafricanchildren.org/spirit_2012_tour.asp. The show will be coming to Vanderbilt on February 25! I cannot wait for everybody to see the amazing hard work and talent of EAC's performers!

 

- Feldman

Mulago

Today Nicholas and I went with Emmanuel to check out the incinerator at Mulago Hospital, the largest referral hospital in Uganda. Emmanuel is a grad. student at Makerere University who also works here at T4T, and he's being doing research on the Mulago incinerator for a while. We discovered that Mulago is having some serious incineration troubles. They recently spent billions of Ugandan Shillings on the purchase of two new incinerators. They really didn't think the decision through because the new incinerators are fuel assisted and each of them consumes around 80 liters of fuel per day. The hospital soon found that it couldn't afford to keep operating the new incinerators, so now they have reverted back to using the old one. The old one still uses fuel on it's start up, but the burners turn off as soon as the incinerator reaches required temperatures. They say that the incinerator achieves secondary combustion, as it has a secondary combustion chamber, but the black smoke that pours out of the chimney is evidence that secondary combustion is not really happening. While we were checking things out, we were suddenly told to leave by the site manager. I was pretty confused, so Nicholas and Emmanuel informed me that because of the huge mistake the hospital has made, wasting so much money on a poorly thought out decision, they work hard to keep their blunders under wraps. They got pretty defensive when they saw us walking around taking pictures of their facilities. It was a pretty interesting situation. Nicholas talked about how he spent a lot of time advising Mulago on proper incineration practices, but they never listened to him, and they refuse to admit their mistake. It was a pretty interesting situation. Very telling as to how things work around here.

Here you can see the smoke coming out of the chimney. Apparently this is less than normal. There is also smoke coming out of the base of the chimney that's hard to see. The point is that this is incinerator has it's fare share of problems. In the top left corner of the picture you can see a bit of the new incinerator's chimney. It is huge and completely unused.

These are pictures of the incinerator's combustion chambers. You can't really tell from the pictures, but the room that houses this machine is incredibly smokey and particles of ash are floating around everywhere. It was pretty shocking to see all this at what is supposed to be one of the best hospitals in Uganda.

-Stokes

Sports Day

I woke up early Saturday morning so that I could attend Sports Day at Taibah Junior School (where EAC primary school students attend) . On Sports Day, students at Taibah are divided into four teams - blue, red, yellow, and green - to compete in a series of events. The 1st place team receives a bull and the 2nd place team receives 2 goats, which are roasted for members to enjoy. 3rd and 4th place receive "nothing" - a line which received laughter from the parent crowd when said by the announcer.

It is hard to describe the excitement and fun of Sports Day. The students marched onto the field, sporting their colors, and cheering. After singing the Ugandan National Anthem and Taibah School song, the students marched to the opposite side of the field  as the band  played "When the Saints go Marching In." Then, the festivities began.  There were great games such as the Dictionary Race (a teacher whispered a word to the students, then the students rant to a dictionary, had to find it, show it to a judge then run to the finish line) and Dressing races (girls had to dress in suits and ties and boys in skirts/blouses then run to the finish line). I loved cheering for EAC's students. It was exciting that the blue team won because it contained more members from EAC then any other. One of the students, Daniel, dominated the track races. He was incredibly fast. 

Attending Sports Day was a terrific start to what turned out to be a great weekend. Stay tuned for more. 

- Feldman

Kabale Day 2

We had only planned on being in Kabale that Thursday, and we were hoping to take an over night bus back to Kampala Thursday night, but we ended up setting up a meeting with the District Health Officer the next day. We book a room at the Manhattan Hotel, and the next day we went with the DHO, Dr. S (I can't spell his last name) to look at an old incinerator, and we checked out a hospitals waste disposal practices. It was also really cool to drive around Kabale because it is a really beautiful area. It's very green with sharp hills all over the place. The temperature is a lot cooler than in Kampala, even chilly higher up in the hills. The outing proved to be very productive, and we got a lot of advice and positive feedback from Dr. S. That night at 8:30 pm we caught the bus back to Kampala. This time the ride was a little more pleasant although I still couldn't sleep. The bus blares its horn every minute or so which, combined with bouncing over potholes at terrifying speeds and weaving in and out of people/bodas/cattle on the roads, killed all sleep efforts. Thankfully we arrived in Kampala at about 4 am safe and sound.

This is at Kabale Regional Referral Hospital where we found a couple of piles of waste burning like this. We were disappointed to see open burning at one of the biggest referral hospitals in the area. This was pretty much the only disposal method they had going on.

This is an incinerator that was sold by T4T some five years ago. It's located at a small rural clinic up in the mountains a little ways outside the city. It is one of the earliest incinerators built by T4T, and you can see that they have come a long way since. This incinerator doesn't support secondary combustion and basically consists of four separate primary chambers. Dr. S (pictured on the right) wanted us to see if we thought it could be repaired, but we found it with all the inside chambers rusted out, and the chimney has fallen over. There isn't much hope for this incinerator.

These pictures can give you a little feel for the landscape in Kabale. It really is a beautiful area. In the bottom picture you can see one of the Crater Lakes. There are two of them, and they are two of the only lakes you can swim in in Uganda. They are also some of the deepest lakes in Uganda. I was told at the deepest point, one of the lakes is around 15oo m deep. Pretty incredible.

- Stokes

Kabale Day 1

At the end of last week, Nicholas and I made a journey down to Kabale, not to be confused with Kibale (western Uganda), in southwest Uganda near the border of Rwanda. We were headed down there to install a new Mak IV incinerator at a local composting site. After a cold, cramped, bumpy, sleepless bus ride tht lasted 7 hours, we arrived in Kabale at about 7 am Thursday morning. After breakfast Nicholas and I went with the movers to deliver the incinerator to Kirengyere Composting Site in the Kabale district. This site is sponsored, along with several other sites around Uganda, by the World Bank. A proposal for acquiring the T4T incinerator to be used for disposing of medical waste generated by the many provate clinics and hospitals in the district had been approved and funding was coming from NEMA (National Environment Management Association) in conjuction with the World Bank and from the Kabale Municipal Council. These people heard about T4T and its incinerator at an annual conference put on by Uganda's Ministry of Health on waste management.

We arrived at the composting site to piles and piles of municipal waste, somewhat sorted into paper, plastic, compostable, etc. I was surprised to hear Nicholas say that the incinerator could take care of all this waste in no more than a month, even though the incinerator was acquired primarily for the district's medical waste. Once we arrived on site, the next task was to get the incinerator off the truck and onto the concrete landing a ways away on the side of the hill. Typically this is accomplished by a crane, but because of overcharging by Kampala's local crane provider and the absence of one in Kabale, we had to resort to other means. It so happened that 14 strapping men mustered to the cause and surprisingly were able to move the incinerator to its cement throneon the hillside. Nicholas made an interesting comment that the people of Kabale's local tribe, even the women, had thereputation for being strong unlike the Bugandans (main tribe in Kampala). Once the incinerator was in place, we began filling it with sand for insulation, and soon the demonstration/training was underway. What we though was going to be a simple training session to educate the site's employees on how to operate the incinerator soon turned into demonstration for over 20 hospita administrators, doctors, and government officials who came to check out this new incinerator. The spectators seemed pretty skeptical at first as the incinerator, on it's maiden voyage and cold from its journey through the mountains, took over an hour to heat up. But once it was up to temperature, and the secondary combustion flame was humming, all were impressed with the lack of smoke in the air as load after load of medical waste was shoveled into the machine.

The demonstration was a huge success. Questions were being asked from all over the group, several people were takin notes, and at the end there were several requests for invoices. A woman who was some kind of local hospital administrator, thanked us profusely for the demonstration and for providing the community with such a great resource. I couldn't believe how well it all went.

As I was leaving, Peter, the site manager, pulled me aside in front of a group of workers from the site. They wanted to hear me talk, even though they spoke very little English, and they wanted me to take a picture of the them to remember them by Peter even decided to jump in the picture. It was a funny little encounter that topped off a great afternoon.

Here you can get a little feel for how much waste is at this place. All under that roofing is pile after pile of waste. It's going to be no small feat to get all that under control.

Almost made it to the cement landing. You can see the truck in the background where it came from. This process took almost 2 hours.

Here you can see the landing built for the incinerator. It has an ash pit dug underneath it, and the cement hut is for storing the medical waste so no one gets to it that isn't supposed to.

Group picture of the site employees.

- Stokes