just another picture of some of our best buddies

we know its wrong to pick favorites, but Said, 5th from the right and holding a baby, is our favorite. He is always helping out around his house (usually carrying a bucket of water back from the spring, on his head of course), he's a fearless soccer player, there is always a smile on his face, and he's so gentle and caring with little kids, as seen in this picture. I hope my mom doesn't come visit, because i have no doubt that she would kidnap him and cause a scene.

There's only one thing to do after a massive rainstorm...

and that's play in the mud.A few people have mentioned that i tend to look stern in every picture. I think they just don't get that that's me looking cool, not angry, but hopefully this smile is enough to hold them over til the next one comes along. and if it's not, the pasty thigh should be.

this is how we roll

It seems that every car in this part of africa falls into one of two categories:
1) It's a brand new $40,000 land cruiser/land rover owned by the UN, one of the countless christian ministries, or some international charity.
2) It's a beaten up frankenstein of a machine where the only remaining original part is the seat belt, and that's just because it's never been used.

We here at GOSESO are proud to belong to the latter group. As long as our toyota hiace can get us from a to b, we'll use the money where its really needed.
(This picture was taken after a rainstorm, and thus it is a bit misleading. Seen any other day, you would swear our car was painted brown.)

our house

here is our house. in the foreground, on the right side, you can see one of our gazebos. on the left, you can see our mini soccer field, and a small child.

forest economics

this is a paragraph that i found in an old book about gombe national park. i really like it, and its pretty relevant to our re-forestation goals/what we are trying to recreate.

"The economy of the forest is marvelous to contemplate. Its raw material is the same thin soil that supports a meager cassava crop in the crowded valleys beyond the park. Its income is the same sunlight and rainfall. But a forest is an investment, the sun and rain and wind of many seasons stored as roots and trunks and branches. Everything that the forest produces – The leaves and fruit that fall, the rotting branch, the bones of the colobus, the dung of the chimp, the wing of the butterfly – everything is returned to the soil and invested once more in the forest."

Saidi, head ranger

GOSESO employs 16 full-time forest rangers. They work in 12 hour shifts, 8 at a time, every day of the year. Their job entails hiking around Kitobe Forest (the 500 acre plot of land that was donated by the village of Kiganza to become the GOSESO campus/research forest) and making sure that no one hunts/cuts down trees/burns the land to open up land for agriculture. Anyway, Saidi, the head ranger, is one of the more intimidating figures i have come across, here, and in life. He is extremely serious, has an unexpectedly deep voice, he never says more than a word or two, and his omnipresent scowl generally sucks all the confidence right out of me. Basically, he is the kind of guy that you re glad your on his side, if for no other reason because it means he's not on the other. Earlier today, a bunch of us were weighing ourselves on Yared's scale, and Saidi was eventually coaxed into taking part in the fun. He weighs 107lbs. fully dressed. and i'm sure his scowl is at least 15lbs. of that. Apparently he is a really small guy, tho i have yet to notice. Regardless, i am not embarrassed to say that he still scares me. Pictures forthcoming (either when i finally gather the courage to ask for one or when i am able to sneak one from a distance without him knowing).

Dirty water, and the solution

here is an example of our bathing/laundry water. you should see it post-use.

here is our solution. we commissioned a new rain-gutter system for the house. we bargained the price from $13 down to $8, labor and parts included. why use a ladder if you can stack a stool on top of a table on top of another table? eh, at least the stool is on top...

roughing it

we are in the midst of another "african" experience. the construction on the road passing through our village has spread to the plumbing. we have grown comfortable with the system of going a few days with running water, a few days without; however, when a few dry days turned into a week, we started asking around to figure out what was wrong. apparently, along with road construction, the water pipes were being updated as well. this is obviously great long-term news, but for the present, it means no running water for 1 or 2 months (and if this is the estimate the government is giving, 6 months is probably more accurate). This means bucket showers with water carried up from the local river. The same river which is used for bathing/clothes washing/recreation/etc. there are no less than 5 villages upstream from us, the populations of each taking full advantage of the river. On the plus side, the water generally has some amount already in it by the time it reaches us.
On top of this, our electricity (which was minimal to begin with, our 1.5 solar panels generally only provided us with enough power to half-charge a laptop per day, or give 2 hours of light.) is out for the foreseeable future, as our driver, lawi, put his phone charger in backwards and blew something in the inverter out. all we gathered from his recounting was that there was lots of smoke.
This is not to say that we are suffering much. the bucket showers aren't too bad, and it gives us an excuse to go a good three days without really needing a shower. Plus, the lack of electricity does wonders to simplifying ones life; when its dark, we go to bed, when its light, we wake up. tho i am sure our tune will change after a few more weeks of this...

Friends!

This is part of our crew that lives at the top of our driveway. Not only do they provide us with great friendship, but they also keep a steady eye on our appearance.

As you can see, wherever there's a camera, there's excitement. While one child tries to keep her composure, the other can barely contain himself

misc.

this is a picture taken on the ride back from Gombe N.P. we're on local ferry, the one that stops at all the isolated fishing villages along lake tangynika to pick up fish and drop off supplies. It's about a 3 hour boat ride from Gombe to Kigoma, and it's actually fairly enjoyable.


This is a picture of the single happiest girl in the world. Her father, the man on the left, is one of the rangers of the Kitobe Forest/GOSESO campus. we ran into them as they were on an evening stroll to the market. When she saw us, she started giggling, and when i started holding her hand and lifting her over puddles in the road, she laughed uncontrollably. Often, when you catch a 2-3 year old kid by surprise, their initial reaction is one of absolute terror; the mere sight of two hairy white kids causes them to cry at the top of their lungs. It was nice to bring out the other extreme for once.

Random Pics

Originally I wanted my debut blog entry to be epic. Unfortunately I find myself stuck with a few random pictures and not much to say, so there you have it. Enjoy!

This first picture is of the room that we stayed in at the Stoner's house in Dar Es Salaam. They were nice enough to let us stay at there while we were stranded in Dar for a few days.


This is a shot of their front porch. Dar tends to get pretty hot during the day and it was so nice to be able to sit out on the porch and feel the breeze that comes off the Indian Ocean. That one's for you Kristina.In addition to us overstaying our welcome, we ended up accidentally leaving a pretty big footprint. Due to Drew's traveling weight, one of the wooden porch chairs collapsed beneath him. To make matters worse, the night before we left for Kiganza I was involved in a Malaron-induced fist fight with the map on the wall. We felt terrible!

Visitors!

We recently had our first visitors, Isaac and Vanessa, from Providence and Boston! They were only here for about 48 hours, but we got a ton of stuff done. We took the 5 hour hike to Gombe Stream National Park (a thunderstorm caught up with us and passed us by, explaining the degree of wetness in the picture. we aren't in that bad of shape.), swam/soaked in lake Tanganyika while watching the sun set over the Congo mountains, we took the 3 hour "locals" boat back to kigoma, we saw the Stanley Livingstone monument/museum (where "Dr. Livingstone, i presume" happened), we toured GOSESO and one of our nursery projects at a primary school, i got a little food poisoning, Vanessa got a little freaked out with all the talk of malaria/snakes/water contamination, Isaac may have lost the greatest flashlight ever (The Eyeblaster), and Matt was the rock of stability. All said, they were absolute troopers, we had a blast sharing our strange little world with them for a few days. I had a bunch more pictures to post, but i forgot to put them on my flash drive, so one is all you get. (Also featured in the picture is Luca, our main guide/translator/electrician/jack-of-all-trades, and Ashahadu, the tree-master and manager of our community outreach.)