Community Mapping Exercise

It’s been a while since I last wrote and a lot has been happening. STT has been pleased to have a few visitors over the last month or so. Mike and Bridget Bridgewater (some of our trustees from the UK) have been here and we’ve got four students from the Institute of Rural development Planning in Dodoma doing a six week placement with STT. Everyone has been involved in a big monitoring and evaluation exercise we’ve been running in two of our older villages Membe and Chamwino. The Bridgewaters have been a fantastic help and I hope I have half as much energy as they do when I get to their age as they’ve put us all to shame!

The students have also been put through their paces. They’ve been doing a fairly intense program of participatory rural appraisal techniques in both villages for our monitoring and evaluation and I think they’ve been knocked off their feet a little bit. They assure me however that they’re learning a lot and I hope it will help them to complete their studies next year and become a new generation of fantastic development professionals!

The last two weeks the STT team and the students stayed some nights in Membe to complete the research, which was a nice experience for me as I haven’t had the chance to stay in the village in Tanzania yet. It should have been a very peaceful experience, being away from the noise of the city and being able to see the stars, but I was lucky enough to have Gideon with me, who loves to tell stories and jokes so we were entertained the whole night as we sat by the fire waiting for our evening meal to cook. He literally had half the community in stitches.

For now we’re looking forward to working out the results from the monitoring and evaluation and focusing on intense sensitization activities in the villages. Also next week we’re going to be part of a big agricultural/environmental show for a national holiday ‘nane nane’. It looks like the pace is set to continue for a while yet.

Anna

Photo: Community mapping exercise led by IRDP students

The Road to Progress

I have now been living in Dodoma for just over a year. A milestone marked by a much needed break to the UK to see friends and family, appreciate all the home comforts (especially the hot showers) and plenty of salsa dancing and strawberries.

One year on means that we are now back in the dry season, which makes for easier off-road driving though the visit to Nzali last week proved it is still possible to get stuck in mud as we crossed the river. Fortunately this time we could reverse out of the ditch and avoid getting very wet! It has been a good year for rain and it has been good to see all the sunflowers and greenness, which is in complete contrast to the dry and dusty landscape of the dry season.

Over the last year, there have been several changes in town – street lights, litter bins and seemingly endless road repairs (causing chaos in the process with no one quite sure where to drive). On our last visit to Nzali it was encouraging to see some of the worst rural roads under repair, which should make a big difference to the long drives.

STT has also progressed. We have now trained stove builders in seven villages in the Dodoma region and the team is responding well to the challenges. A recent assessment of the project showed that many people were not using the new stove with the knock on effect that no one else gets to see the benefits so demand for the stoves stagnates. The lack of use of the stove generally reflects lack of knowledge or confidence about how to use it or because there was a problem with the way the stove was built.

Thus we have rethought the project to be better able to support builders and other community members. Innovations to the chimney design, in order to ensure wind does not blow smoke back inside the kitchen, have so far proved effective. Our work is continuing through cooking, demonstrating and further training for builders on how to use and market the stoves. Cooking demonstrations so far are encouraging with the benefits clearly seen to those taking part. There is a long way to go but the team is working hard to ensure the stoves are high quality and work well for those buying them.

Lesley

Photo top: Preparing food for a cooking demonstration;

Photo bottom: Extending the chimney outside has proved effective at shielding the stove from the wind