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
