D-Lab Tanzania: Stoves, Homestays and Charcoal

This time is the D-Lab Tanzania team who reports from the Kilimanjaro Region. Mario Bollini, one of the trip leaders, who's also the instructor of D-Lab: Mobility and a graduate student in Mechanical Engineering bring us news from the team:

We've had a busy last week in Arusha.  We visited a Masaii stove project that presented us with a very interesting model of development and that provoked some interesting discussions about how and why to do what we do here in Tanzania.

Most of the students participated in a creative capacity building workshop run by our partner Daniel at Global Cycle Solutions.  It was an exciting and fun opportunity to teach and practice brainstorming and problem-solving to members of the community.  Community members worked on ways to reduce soil nutrient erosion, keep chickens healthier in their pens, and reduce indoor smoke from cooking.  The session went really well and Daniel will follow up with the community to start implementing the projects they designed.

Students spent last night in homestays and got a feel for what it is like to live in this part of Tanzania.

We head out to Laiboni in a few hours and are currently packing up our things and validating our latest and most elaborate tent waterproofing scheme.  On Sunday we'll be going on a day-long safari inside the Ngorongoro crater, we're all excited!  Even more exciting though is the work that we'll be doing next week: training teachers in a computer based curriculum (we also downloaded many technical manuals and Wikipedia for the community), testing various stove designs in homes, and teaching community partners how to make charcoal out of waste agricultural products.  It looks like it will be a busy and rewarding week.