August 11, 2003
Tea Time
Everywhere you go in Mali, you see people sitting outside drinking tea out of these little shot glasses. It's like the national pasttime.
The tea is drunk in 3 rounds (so they can recycle the tea). The first round is quite strong (and is "strong like death"), the second round is "sweet like life", and the last round is "sugary like love". and you're supposed to serve the tea with peanuts.
as you can proably tell, i'm no chef....
Ingredients:
-25g Green Tea (Gunpowder brand)
-2 sprigs of mint (a sprig is about 5-10 leaves, apparently)
-about a shot or two of sugar
-water
Round 1:
a) pour 3 'cups' of water into tea kettle (note: they use shot glasses instead of cups, so when I say a cup, I mean a shot-glass--maybe 1-2shots)
b) add 1 bag of tea (25g)
c) Boil for 15 min
d) add 1/2 cup of sugar
e) mix. mix by pouring some tea into the cup, then pouring the cup back into the tea kettle. repeat several times.
f) serve 3/4 of a cup per person. (serves about 3 or 4 people)
Round 2:
using the same tea as before.....
a) add 3 cups of water
b) boil 12-13min
c) add 1/4 cup of sugar
d) add 2 sprigs of mint
e) mix
f) serve
Round 3:
using same tea/mint as before.....
a) add 2.5 cups of water
b) boil 10min
c) add less than a quarter cup of sugar
d) mix. serve.
Does this Taxi Stop for Chickens?
We set out after breakfast from our Hotel in Grand Popo on our way to Ouidah, a small town about 25km east - also known as the voodoo center of Benin. To get to the main road, where we had the best chance of flagging down a taxi on its way between Togo and Cotonou, we had to hop on the back of a zemidjan - a moped taxi. Since there was only one zemidjan in sight, the driver convinced us he could take two of us…even though Tim looked incredibly skeptical.
Later that day we had a zemidjan driver in Ouidah that claimed he could carry 4 passengers or even 5 petit passengers! We quickly learned that zemidjan drivers are adept at handling all kinds of passengers - grande and petit (even little babies ride on the back of zemidjans wrapped in pagnas around their mother's back) and all kinds of baggage - including produce, bags of rice, household goods, firewood, tables….
Anyway, we were still new to the zemidjan experience at that point and without another zemidjan in sight, and the prospect of the long hot dusty walk to the main road, we decided to take our chances.
The ride was most difficult for Tim as he sat on the back and had to cling desperately to the seat. I was afraid we'd hit a big bump and loose him off the back of the zemidjan - but miraculously this didn't happen. Slightly wind blown and relieved, we arrived at the main road and paid our zemidjan driver who quickly sped off to find more people in need of a lift. Now all we needed was a bush taxi going in our direction.
Here is Tim on the side of the road waiting to flag down a taxi heading in our direction.
Unfortunately all the cars going in our direction looked like they were relics from the sixities - rather disheveled and kind of falling apart. It didn't take long before one of these cars rambled to a halt in front of us. Doors flew open, the driver (dressed entirely in olive green) jumped out and there was frantic discussion back and forth in both French and the local language. A few bags and people switched places, one passenger departed and then the driver indicated that we had better hurry up and get in like he might just leave without us. Two seats had opened up in the second row - apparently for us. We negotiated a price to Ouidah, then piled in, and we were all off.
Our bush taxi - also called a "septplace" in some W. African countries (since it technically seats seven people, two in the front with the driver, 3 on the middle bench, and two on the back bench) - was an old Peugot. The odometer read over 210,000 miles but it had stopped turning long ago, probably many thousands of miles ago. Every surface inside of the car was covered in a reddish-brown dust, many parts were missing, and the seats were all saggy and worn. All the windows were rolled down - it was a pleasant breeze - which was lucky because as far as I could tell there was no way to roll up the windows. There were no handles. There were also no door handles or locks - just rusty gaps in the door. I was amazed that the car held together over 40 mph - it seemed as if we went too fast or hit a bump the wrong way parts might just fly off and we'd be left with just a Peugot frame and some wheels.
The one thing I'd noticed that did function in every automobile in W. Africa is the horn. A loud horn is essential (unlike door handles) on anything that travels over 5mph. Beeeep, beep, beep! Women carrying firewood, cars, mopeds, goats, cows, chickens are all blasted out of the way with the aggressive and often abused sound of the car horn.
Our driver was a jolly fellow, with a round face, contagious smile and mischievous eyes. We quickly learned that seven was not the limit to the number of passengers that could fit in his Peugot. And as captive passengers on this journey he decided we all had plenty of time to join him on a few little errands on the way. Our first stop, 3 minutes down the road, was for fuel. There was a lady selling fuel in various sized glass bottles a top a small wooden table on the side of the road. Our driver hoped out, poured a bottle of fuel into the car, took a leak off the side of the road, and exchanged pleasantries with the nice lady selling the fuel. I would guess this was a regular stop for him by the way they joked back and forth and laughed like old friends.
A typical fuel stand on the side of the road.
Following our fuel stop we started acquiring more passengers and assorted baggage. An old woman, perhaps on her way to a market in the next village, slid into the front seat. Then we stopped at a cluster of mud brick buildings down the road where some young kids stood out front selling firewood. The driver started yanking bundles from a couple of stacks and tossed at least eight of them on the roof of the Peugot. I have no idea how they stayed up there as we swerved off down the road - but they did.
We picked up another lady with a little girl, who joined us in the second row..and then two young guys and a young woman. We now had 9 passengers and 2 small infants squeezed into our ramshackle Puegot. Suddenly we veered over to stop at a tomato stand. Both the driver and the young woman in the front got out to buy a few bags of tomatoes…the two woman in the back with the little baby voiced their impatience with our jolly olive green driver…" chauffer…" they called out expressing the exasperation with all his shopping errands but knowing there was little they could do about it.
Still, at least we didn't stop for chickens. We did pass a taxi on our way loaded with chickens on the roof! I couldn't really tell if they were alive or dead or perhaps just in a state of shock at traveling upside down tied to the roof of a car.
Back on the road again, it wasn't long before we encountered a police check. There were a few wooden barricades in the road and some uniformed police men with rifles wandering around looking official but slightly out of place. A few hundred meters before the police check, another taxi traveling in the opposite direction had flashed his brights and our driver had pulled out a red plastic taxi sign from a compartment in the dash. He plunked it on the roof and, with the plug from the taxi sign dangling by a short cord into the drivers window, we made our way past the police check. A few hundred yards past the police check, the driver took a quick look in the broken rearview mirror and, confident that he was out of sight, pulled the sign back down and tossed it back into the shelf in the dash.
As we got closer to Ouidah there was more traffic on the road - other ancient bush taxis, trucks and mopeds. There were times when the thick black clouds of exhaust became overwhelming, however rolling up the window to avoid excessive inhalation was not an option. I tried to hold my breathe in the thick of it…but it was impossible to avoid breathing in the heavy acidic fumes that shrouded the road.
At last we reached Ouidah. Our driver pulled over to let us off on the side of the street in the middle of a mob of young boys. They crowded around us to see where we wanted to go, while Tim pulled out our CFA to pay the driver. Unfortunately, the driver had no change (he'd probably spent it all on tomatoes and firewood) and so he took the rest of his fare from one of the kids standing around and drove off. We were now obliged to pay back this kid. We negotiated a zemidjan ride from him and his friend for the two us to get us to the center of town. And off we were again, traveling African style, into the voodoo capital of Benin.
Condom Vending Machine
Back at AJA in Mali, the director Souleymane Sarr asked DtM to look into ways to improve their design for a condom vending machine. AIDS, or SIDA in French, is a huge and growing problem across Africa. In conservative Muslim societies like Mali, young men are often put off from buying condoms due to the attached social stigma of premarital sex. The coin-operated, purely mechanical AJA machine is designed to provide an easy, anonymous alternative to buying condoms at the pharmacy or local boutique.
Several international and local organizations are involved in public education about the use of condoms. These include distributing stickers with pro-condom messages, organizing rallies and parades for young people, and setting up roadside stands for condom distribution. There are also lots of billboards advertising condoms and safe sex in general--this particular sign, from downtown Cotonou, Benin, is aimed at truck drivers, a population particularly at risk for becoming infected with HIV/AIDS, and often responsible for spreading the disease to the rural communities they pass through.
Issues with the current design of the AJA condom vending machine relate to reliability and noise.
The 100 CFA coin (equivalent to US$0.20) necessary to operate the machine is about the same diameter as an American quarter, but thicker and heavier (exact dimensions will be posted when we get back to Cambridge). The vending machine must be able to reliably distinguish between denominations, and to avoid it getting abused by an irate customer, it should reliably eject incorrect coins. The machine should have a window or some other means of indicating the supply of condoms remaining. The ability to make change is currently considered outside the scope of the design.
In terms of dispensing condoms, the machine's current hopper and slide has a habit of jamming. It may also be possible for a particularly frenzied customer to shake condoms lose without paying anything, which sort of defeats the purpose of a vending machine.
In terms of noise, the current plunger-driven, spring-controlled vending mechanism makes a sound like a rusty guillotine--one that doesn't exactly convey a sense of discreetness and anonymity.
Video of the AJA condom vending machine in action will be posted when we get back to Cambridge.
Poisonwood Bible
Barbara Kingsolver's Poisonwood Bible follows an American missionary family--husband and wife and their four daughters--through their service in the Congo from 1959 to 1961, a tumultuous period which coincided with Congolese independence from Belgium, the country's first elections and the shattering coup d'etat which followed. Kingsolver shows the missionaries' profound ignorance of the culture in which they've arrived, and illustrates the difficulties of crossing that gulf of misunderstanding.
At first Mama got after us for staring and pointing at people. She was all the time whispering, "Do I have to tell you girls every single minute don't stare!" But now Mama looks too. Sometimes she says to us or just herself, Now Tata Zinsana is the one missing all the fingers, isn't he? Or she'll say, That big goiter like a goose egg under her chin, that's how I remember Mama Nguza.
Father said, "They are living in darkness. Broken in body and soul, and don't even see how they could be healed."
Mama said, "Well, maybe they take a different view of their bodies."
Father says the body is the temple. But Mama has this certain voice sometimes. Not exactly sassing back, but just about nearly. She was sewing us some window curtains out of dress material so they wouldn't be looking in at us all the time, and had pins in her mouth.
She took the pins out and said to him, "Well, here in Africa that temple has to do a hateful lot of work in a day." She said, "Why, Nathan, here they have to use their bodies like we use things at home--like your clothes or your garden tools or something. Where you'd be wearing out the knees of your trousers, sir, they just have to go ahead and wear out their knees!" [Barbara Kingsolver, The Poisonwood Bible, p.62/616]
August 12, 2003
At the Centre Songhai
And now it's the Centre Songhai, in Porto Novo, on the coast about an hour's drive from Cotonou. We've spent a delirious morning dashing all around this amazing facility, visiting the fish ponds and juice-making facility and machine shop and all sorts of other places, asking questions and taking pictures. More concrete documentation to follow soon!
August 13, 2003
Centre Songhai
"The Centre Songhai is principally involved in agricultural training, research, and production for sustainable livelihood in Africa. Founded by Father Godfrey Nzamujo, a Dominican priest, in 1985, the Center has been managed by Africans since then. The Center's aim is to create the conditions for improving the lives of Africans, the great majority of whom live in rural areas." [from the Songhai website]
Centre Songhai is a world leader in innovative development programs, including integrated farming, biomass gasification, microenterprise and IT for rural communities. Nzamujo, the 1993 Africa Prize Laureate, is a visionary and an inspiring educator. Songhai has established partnerships and student exchange programs with a number of US universities (Wake Forest, SUNY-Oswego, Colorado State) and has close ties with universities and technical schools across Africa. Songhai is an excellent partner for sourcing and implementing DtM design challenges. In the photo, you can see Songai director Fr. Nzamujo at the far right.
"Songhai's headquarters are at Porto-Novo in the Republic of Benin. Songhaï's partnership now extends to organizations in Europe, America, Asia, and Africa. Songhai promotes agricultural entrepreneurship among the youth in Africa. This is done within an environment where appropriate and positive human values are regarded as essential elements. These young africans are trained to become responsible citizens in their communities; socio-economic entrepreneurs, men and women with initiative and creativity, ready and able to meet the social and economic challenges of the future. This means that, in addition to the knowledge and skills our students acquire at the Center, we also train them to develop a strong desire for change and for a better life. Songhai's training model for human development can be adopted and applied in any part of the world." [from the Songhai website]
The following are pictures from our tour of the facility:
Kinkajou at Centre Songhai
Yesterday evening, we had our eleventh test of the Kinkajou system, this time for Bill Adé, the Songhai machine shop manager, and a group of technical trainees from Benin and Nigeria. The test was held at the Centre Songhai auditorium, an open-air, grass-roofed amphitheater with seating for about 300--the largest meeting space of our field tests to date.
Given that the Centre Songhai is well served with electrical outlets, and many of the offices have computers, the trainees were initially skeptical of the the Kinkajou's utility. Early recommendations included adding the ability to play video cassettes and computer files.
Bill arrived ten or fifteen minutes into the demonstration, and pointed out that the Kinkajou would be a useful training tool for two Songhai centers in northern Benin, and their outreach programs in local villages. The discussion then moved onto more technical aspects of power requirements and the possibility of local manufacture.
This morning, we met with Songhai director Frere Nzamujo and Léonce Sessou, the head of communications. They were impressed with the rugged design, and the fact that the projected image was still visible on the wall of Nzamujo's office, even though it was still pretty bright in the room with all the daylight coming through the blinds. They are interested in running a pilot test with the projector at their rural training centers in northern Benin and Nigeria. These discussions will continue via email once we get back to the US.
Centre Songhai and Light Up the World
At this morning's meeting with Songhai director Frere Nzamujo, in addition to the Kinkajou and various other potential DtM projects, we discussed potential applications for Light Up the World's one-watt LED lamps. Rural community lighting is the most obvious application, and Songhai does work with solar lighting systems for their training centers in regions not connected to the grid. A less obvious application, and the one that was the most immediately compelling to Fr. Nzamujo, was the use of LUTW lamps in Songhai's fish and poultry hatcheries. A reliable source of low-power lighting would allow them to increase the growth rates of fish larvae, and would encourage their chicken to lay more eggs. The fact that an LED bulb has an average lifespan of 20,000 hours--that's almost three years of continuous use--made it an attractive alternative to incandescents and fluorescents.
This is the Songhai egg house--thousands of chickens in wire cages, with wire ramps on the floor of each cage that empty directly into little gutters, allowing the staff to collect the eggs without having to hunt around under the chickens.
This facility houses juvenile chickens. "All they seem to do is run around, peep and eat," said Liz.
Finally, this is from the larvae tank at the Songhai fish farm.
We left three LUTW lamp sets with Fr. Nzamujo for testing in their hatcheries. They are looking forward to contacting David Irvine-Halliday and his colleagues at LUTW, and they have promised to send us details and data from their various test installations on the farm.
Design Challenges at the Centre Songhai
Centre Songhai was a gold mine for potential DtM design challenges. They also have the facilities and trained staff necessary to build and test many existing DtM prototypes. Finally, they have an extensive network of collaborators both with in West Africa and abroad, with whom they can exchange ideas and disseminate successful new designs.
We collected a trunk-load of preliminary data on a number of potential DtM design challenges, including this prototype palm nut shelling machine, based on a Nigerian design and currently in development at the Centre.
Fr. Nzamujo also asked DtM to look into continuing the development of a low-cost reduction gear for their various agricultural-processing equipment. Shown below is an expensive reduction gearbox imported from the US, alongside a less expensive gear set built at Songhai, made from a gearbox salvaged from a Peugeot 504.
According to Nzamujo and the staff at Centre Songhai, he toughest problems--"casse-têtes" or literally head-breakers--also involve agricultural production. Songhai is committed to developing methods for micro-production of agricultural goods, in other words, tools for adding value to the raw produce of rural agriculture. These include shelling machines, peeling machines, juice-making machines, seed presses, cotton separators, coffee roasting machines, etc. The idea is to allow rural communities to capture more of the value of the goods they produce, and also to reduce their vulnerability to fluxuations in the international prices for raw goods.
For example, in terms of a specific project, both Centre Songhai and MVV in Kemon are looking for machines to shell both sunflower seeds and sesame seeds. In both cases, there is currently no alternative to the current system of small-scale local production in the village which involves laboriously shelling both kinds of seeds by hand. Sunflower oil in particular is a nutritious and valuable commodity. Presses for the shelled seeds exist; a shelling machine would be an invaluable complement.
Another specific project is a machine to peel manioc (cassava), a starchy tuber grown throughout the tropics as a food staple. Maniocs come in a bewildering variety of shapes and sizes; as with sunflower seeds, the only means of peeling the stuff at the village level is by hand.
We have tons of additional material from our visit to the Centre, which we will process and format as formal DtM design challenges when we get back to Boston.
August 16, 2003
Culture Shock in Europe
What happened to all of the moped taxis? Where are all the chickens and goats? It must be Brussels, which means we're halfway home. We'll spend the weekend dining on moules et frites and taking the sun at some sidewalk cafes, before catching the plane back to Boston.
Murray, Oscar--looking forward to seeing you both at the airport. To everyone else, thank you for all of your wonderful messages and your interest in DtM. We'll catch up with our correspondence first thing next week!
