Steve and Barnabas in Tanzania

One of the fun things I got to do last year was participate in the Peace Corp Volunteer’s conference for secondary school (high school) girls.  This year they did a conference for boys in Singida and I was allowed to participate again.  I don’t really do much at these other than walk around and smile but it is still fun getting to see students participate in science competitions especially since this is the first time for some of them to actually put what they learn on the blackboard to some kind of activity that they actually do. One of the great things about the Peace Corp Volunteers is that they are easy going, fun loving group but that they also critically analyze their own work and improve on it.  For example, last year’s science day was great and they had a lot fun while learning to put their knowledge to work.  But with everything in this world if you look at it in hindsight you can spot a couple of things to tweak and make it better.  That is ex...

So one of the things most people find shocking about our medical clinic is that it has real electricity.  It did have a solar panel and battery installed four to five years ago but it was not a system that was matched up or sized to the need.  Add to that its age and lack of working charge controller and you have a system that normally is sounding more alarms than solving problems.  In fact the inverter has spent most of every day with the fault alarm going off. One of the exciting things this quarter is the money to put in a proper solar power generation system for the medical clinic. Barnabas Bear inspects the solar panels This included two each 50 Watt Panels and two each 100 Ah Batteries a charge controller and DC/AC Inverter for the solar power generation part of the project.  One thing we were doing this time was only one part of the system would be running off AC power-the lab equipment and cell phone chargers. The lighting system would all be DC wi...

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 s...