My mornings are starting to abide by a routine. I wake up around 6am, brush my teeth, stretch for a little bit (because my body has been very sore some this new exercise regiment), write my blog post, have some breakfast and off to work. Yesterday I woke up earlier though, as I hope to do every day, and was able to deal with my laundry that I had done the previous night. Unfortunately it didn’t dry overnight, but hanging it near the open windows throughout the day worked wonders!
My morning at work was very very productive. Because I knew I was going into the field again, I wanted to make sure I got at least some work done. I was able to start on a few new projects, as my other ones are nearly finished. I had about four hours for this before we left for the field at noon.
Our first stop was at an unserved community (a prospective village for the next project site). The community leaders took us to see their current water source (above). The water was extremely turbid, had bugs swimming all around in it, and overall is very unsafe. On top of that, during the rainy season it is very common for this pond to reduce into a muddy swamp, making water collection an issue. Due to all of this, the leaders were employing WFG to connect this village to a water tank that has already been built nearby.
As much as the day was spent learning about the process and stages WFG goes through at every point of a project, absorbing the beauty in the landscape was another goal of mine. This space reminds me a bit of Serengeti with how flat it is and then here and there the plains are interrupted by these kojpes. It truly is a beautiful environment.
I was happy to find my cow friends were everywhere we went. One thing I’m going to miss about Tanzania is seeing grazing cattle everywhere I go. In the proper city of Shinyanga there aren’t many cattle—not like Arusha at least—so it’s nice to be able to observe them when we go out to the field.
We found ourselves in a bit of a predicament at one point with a low fuel warning. Our day had only just started, but we had to turn back around to get some gas which added a lot to the travel time. There are only so many roads to access these communities, and gas stations are far and few between once you get out into the rural settings, so we had to head nearly all the way back to town.
After the fuel was sorted, we had to travel out to some homes that were pretty deep in the bush. As you can see from the picture above, there weren’t many accessible roads and we had to pave our own way a little bit. It also didn’t help that it had been awhile since visiting these project houses, so we got lost a few times on the way.
We got home from the field after four and a half hours. I was pretty tired, so I called it a day and went on home. On the way home I stopped by a little street restaurant because I saw some delicious looking beef skewers. It’s rare that I find steak available at the places around where I’m staying, so I took advantage of it and sat down for a nice early dinner.
I went for my run after my light but delicious dinner. Along my route I saw this interesting site. I don’t know what’s going on here, but I had seen a billowing plume of dark grey smoke from a ways off, and was surprised to find this as its source. I often see and smell smoke because for garbage disposal people simply burn their trash, but I think this was more than that. I observed the scene for a little bit, but the people around the flames were only standing still and watching it. So my theory is that it was some sort of burn line.
I got home from my run and called it an early night. For the past few days I’ve been feeling pretty fatigued when I wake up, even though I have a lot of energy throughout the day and once I get up and moving. I was hoping that getting some extra sleep would solve this issue, but I think it’s just my love for a comfortable bed that causes this problem. I’m unsure what today will hold, but I think it’s probably best if I stay at the office and get some work done before I go out to the field again tomorrow.