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Showing posts from July, 2014

Sixth Month Trip to Nairobi-Slums, Science Experiments, Girls who Box and a Riot that almost was

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Wow hard to believe it was time for my second trip to Nairobi-For those who have not been following long-my visa in Tanzania requires I leave the country every 90 days (most countries have something like this) and so I take a bus to Nairobi, Kenya for a couple of days of good food and to hang out with one or more missionary friends there.  This trip proved to be just as exciting though less from the standpoint of what all went wrong to just exciting this time.  It will be a long blog so I am going to break it up into major groupings as follows: Visiting a Secondary (High) School in the slums of Nairobi and doing science and engineering talk/experiments. Meeting some of the young ladies who are part of BoxGirls in Nairobi, Kenya and learning some of their story including a professional featherweight and one who will be representing Kenya at he Commonwealth Games. The Riot that almost was Misc tr avel/shopping stories Visiting a Secondary (High) School in the slums of N

De Road, De Road...Oh Wait! De Bridge De Bridge

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Let's play the age game.  I am guessing most of my readers are old enough to remember a show from the late 70's to early 80's called Fantasy Island that aired on ABC.  The concept was simple, the wealthy (normally though some story lines indicated you paid according to your means) paid to have their fantasy fulfilled on this wonderful little island run by the mysterious Mr. Roarke but was typically associated with his sidekick who would run and yell "De Plane, De Plane" when a new group of passengers were arriving.   When I first started coming to Tanzania in 2001, they were starting a major road project across the country.  At the time very little of it was done-let's say 3%.  In 2006 there was progress but still a long way from completion.  Each year after that more of it was done until I arrived in January and was happy to find that all the major roads were completed which means I travel from Arusha to Singida on mostly paved roads (proper road substruct

The sands of time

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So I promised some follow up to items mentioned in my last blog but unfortunately the internet service has been very weak lately and I have not been able to follow up  on that.  So here is the first one and I will get the second one out when I return from this trip to the village probably end of this week.  This trip is dedicated to double checking all measurements for screening the windows and our first attempt to seal up the building attic spaces against bat intrusions.   During one of my last visits I talked about repairing the playground equipment and hauling sand up from the riverbed to place around concrete footings and hard soil to make the playground area a little safer.  I expect this will be something that has to be done on a regular basis as sand will disperse from the area rather quickly. Zachariah helping by carrying the shovel selfie carrying the sand First a quick primer on the project.  The playground equipment was installed between my visit in 2010 and le