Only One Month Left in TZ

First I should start off by apologizing for being M.I.A on this blog for the past 8 months. To be honest, our blog ended up on a Peace Corps website that publishes all volunteers’ blogs, and basically I got intimidated and no longer felt like I was just writing to my friends and family. So I stopped blogging all together, but recently I decided I needed to get over it and fill you in on our life. Especially since we only have a little over a month left in Tanzania.

So here’s a glimpse of the highlights from the past 8 months:



My parents came to Tanzania… We spent a week in Mtwara, and as you can see my mom fits right in with the villagers. We experienced a few bumps in the road (a flat tire, a boat that was stuck in the sand, dirty hotel rooms), but my mom and Freddy were troopers. They can totally rough it in Africa!



Then we all went to Zanzibar for a week to enjoy the safi life. I have to admit it was a little hard going back to Mtwara after spending time with family in amazing hotels with great food, hot water, and reliable electricity.

 

Thanksgiving- We actually had to catch, kill, clean and then cook our turkey… It was our first time killing a turkey, and hopefully it was the last. I say we, but in reality Moss did the dirty work. I was just there for moral support. My main role was to cook the turkey, and I must say I definitely had the easy job!

 

Christmas in Mtwara with Adam and then safari time… It was great to have Adam down in Mtwara with us for Christmas. Then we all went on a safari to the Serengeti, Lake Manyara, and Ngorongoro Crator. It was absolutely beautiful!

After Christmas Moss and I both get back to work, work, and more work…



I have been busy teaching the 3rd year medical students, facilitating a number of different trainings for the doctors in the area, getting books for our library, and writing a grant to build a pharmacy school (thanks to all those who supported this project! It’s coming along great!)



Moss has been working in the research and monitoring department at the marine park, and currently he is putting together an amazing report on local fisheries. He has also been going into the field to monitor turtle’s nests, mangroves, and he teaches fisherman how to complete fish catch surveys so they properly monitor and track all the fishing activity.


 

Life outside of work… Whenever we are not working we spend time cooking, exercising, snorkelling, or hanging out with friends on the beach.

 

A crazy event in our life was trying to get our cat spayed… After 3 awful surgeries, 2 of which were on our dining room table, Kali survived and will forever be kitty free.

 

Close of Service (COS) Conference… Just last month we had our COS conference where we got to see all the other Peace Corps volunteer in our training class. We also learned about the complicated process of ending our Peace Corps service, which involves a lot of paper work and 3 days of doctor visits.

It’s hard to believe two years of our life have come and gone. We are definitely looking forward to returning to the states in August, but we know we will miss a lot about our life here in TZ. Before we return, however, we will have one last adventure to Zanzibar and South Africa with the soon to be newlyweds Rowan and Damon. We are counting down the days till we get to see them! T-minus 44!

So that’s our past 8 months in a nutshell and we know we have a lot to look forward to in the upcoming months. Miss you all. XOXO

In a recent experiment, I tried to demonstrate the effect of the merciless Mtwara sun on the human head – as represented by a small watermelon…



(Note: We don’t have so much fruit here on the that we can actually waste it, but this unripe watermelon was one of many that outgrew the shade clothe on which I’d trellised its unruly vine. We've since learned that you can actually boil an unripe watermelon to get something like squash. Another idea: we made homemade wine out of one. Nevertheless, the above fruit went to a good scientific purpose.)

In more serious news, it's been a busy time for us here in Mtwara. Merritt’s been working on her pharmacy school project (scheduling carpenters, negotiating over furniture), along with administering end of semester exams. Meanwhile, I’ve been spending a good amount of time out in the field, helping conduct an environmental baseline survey that British Gas is commissioning for the port of Mtwara. Surveying mangrove stands – it wouldn’t be so bad were it not for the razor-sharp oyster shells that encrust every tree and semi-solid surface, and all the mud of course.

Fieldwork is no joke at this time of year in Mtwara. The “long rains” start at the end of March, and we’ve certainly had our fair share of rain lately. March and April are also the season in between the two monsoons, so about a week ago the wind just disappeared. So now, if it isn’t raining, the sun feels like walking under a heat lamp (thus the watermelon, a fitting representation, I believe).

Sometimes the heat can be more than just a matter of comfort. Last Wednesday, I was scheduled to attend a luncheon in town with a delegation of ambassadors from the EU visiting to learn about the natural gas industry. Just before leaving for the lunch, I made the mistake of trying to run a quick errand on my bike. I thought I was going to have to meet fourteen ambassadors looking like I had just stepped out of a sauna – and would have, had I not been saved by a windy ride across town in a bajaji.

Indeed, as the EU delegation demonstrates, the gas industry continues to be the big news here in Tanzania. This week BG announced that its latest offshore well identified probably about 3.4 trillion cubic feet of natural gas – the company’s fourteenth largest discovery in years of drilling all over the world.

What this means is that the company’s combined discoveries (from four exploratory wells in two of its three lease blocks) are just shy enough to potentially justify a “two-train” LNG plant, which refers to the number of compressing plants in these types of facilities. They’ll be drilling for several more years just to determine the size and extent of the gas reserves, but it’s looking more and more likely that Tanzanian’s gas will one day go to fuel power plants in India and China.

My brief unplanned remarks to the ambassadors were accompanied by a fitting demonstration to my point about why the Marine Park is working closely with BG and the gas industry. Suddenly, the unmistakable sound of dynamite being detonated underwater rumbled across the outdoor patio at Msemo Hotel. Some local fisherman was dynamiting the reef about a kilometer from the hotel. As I said to the ambassadors, the park’s chief threats – overdependence on marine resources and illegal gear use – are much greater concerns than any potential environmental threat posed by offshore drilling. From the Park’s perspective, BG is a potential partner who can help finally bring some socioeconomic and environmental stability to the Mtwara coastal region.

But the issue is so complicated, you have to question even how to approach it. Do you look at problems such as dynamite fishing and beach seining as a matter of law enforcement or economic development? On the one hand, you can’t live in a developing country (with limited government services) without recognizing the need for rules and laws (and the need for them to be enforced). But when you consider that the people dynamiting the reef are uneducated youths with few economic opportunities, you also must admit that the solution is not just a matter of increasing arrests and convictions.

Given my background in natural resource management, I can’t help but conclude that even if these people wanted to continue these destructive activities, nature will necessarily dictate that they can’t keep doing this forever. The real problem is that they have few other means of livelihood (so youths go out and dynamite the reefs). But to really understand the problem means also recognizing how difficult finding a solution will be. Nevertheless, I think with BG’s help, the Park may be able to take a pretty good stab at the problem, but of course that will be decided long after I am gone.

Anyway, that’s the habari here. Merritt and I are applying for jobs in the States and really looking forward to coming home at the beginning of August.



As you can see we’re surviving in spite of the heat, and even Kali has finally recovered from her surgery. Actually, funny thing, about a week ago, we finally let her out after a month inside (and many escape attempts), and the first thing she does is go and kill a butterfly.

The practice has since continued (with dragonflies, shrews, mice, and this morning, a fairly large rat, all brought home to show off, of course). So it appears that her surgery simply replaced her urge to seduce Tomcats with one to hunt down and kill anything that scurries. But honestly we’d prefer she come home bearing dead mice rather than baby kittens, so I guess the surgery was a success. Merritt’s going to bake a banana bread to thank our vet, who maybe didn’t do the best job the first time, but earned our eternal gratitude for twice coming to our house (somewhat promptly) to close up her belly.

Shovel Ready

Mid-February, we’re in the middle of the dry spell in between the short and the long rains (“Matali”). But the sun has reached its celestial meridian in the Southern Hemisphere and the surf’s way up with the full moon, so we know the rain isn’t far off.

Despite the dry conditions, the garden and the trees we’ve planted seem to be doing pretty well, though I am having a hard time getting anything but papaya seedlings to grow.

I planted every kind of seed I had but all I got was papaya.

At the market, the mangoes are starting to fade, as are the pineapples, although oranges are apparently on their way and you can always get bananas. Tomatoes are suddenly three to four thousand shillings a kilo, so we’ve cut back on those (Pole, Merritt). And even with the heavy surf, we’ve had some incredible fish lately – tuna, grouper, and a 16-pound snapper out at Ruvula that was up there on the list of the best fish I’ve had in country. We were camping out at Ruvula with several friends from town – a few ex pat couples and two other Peace Corps volunteers from Mtwara, and we grilled the fish over hot charcoal coals.



The fisherman from whom we bought the fish that morning had been out in deep water the night before, in a small boat with an outboard, and was now selling a bicycle basket’s worth of barracuda, rainbow runners, snapper, and giant trevally. I had never had rainbow runner before, which is like a big mackerel and probably would have been great, but there was no passing over the one big snapper – it would feed us all and at 30,000 shillings (about $15), seemed like the only kind of deal you get on a isolated beach in East Africa.

Actually, the other fish were going to the construction crew that is at the marine park’s head office down the beach from where we were camping. With funds from the United Nations Development Program, we’re adding several staff houses and a boat shed. They really didn’t think about housing when they originally built the office, but its impractical to expect the new office to get used if you have to drive all the way from Mtwara each day. It makes getting our research and monitoring difficult, and with six months left in my service, I am starting to get nervous about all the work I have left.

Merritt, meanwhile, just completed fundraising for her pharmacy school project, so she’s not heading anywhere until that’s done. Thank you so much to all our friends and family who contributed to the project. As you saw in the grant documents, it’s a really good cause – the first such school in Tanzania’s Deep South. Just imagine if your concept of a pharmacy was a small store in someone’s home with a couple of gauze wrap bandages and malaria medication. Likewise, imagine if you went to a hospital for emergency care and there was no pharmacist to properly administer medication.

In general, the undeveloped state of Mtwara is acutely apparent, in large part because of all the work that is currently going on to fix it. I am talking about “shovel ready” projects. The COTC campus, where the pharmacy school will be built, is just about to open an new assistant medical officer (“AMO”) school, in a beautiful brand new set of classrooms built by the Global Fund. And the town’s roads are all under construction starting with the main round-about (“keep-o-lefti”). And British Gas is basically building a new road on one side of town, so that they can get heavy equipment to the port (which they’re also renovating) without driving right through the downtown core.

Speaking of British Gas, their drilling has started at a site just offshore of Mnazi Channel, the first of four exploratory wells the company plans to drill this year. They’re looking for gas in water between 1,000 and 1,500 meters deep. I’ve actually been speaking with some of their officials because the Park is going to enter into an agreement where they’ll provide us with spill response training and equipment. It makes sense, given the logistics of it, as our boats and staff are in position to respond, should something ever happen. And when you include community members (e.g., honorary rangers, research volunteers), there’s a sense of local control – or at least the ability to respond.

Statoil's drilling rig near Dar.

We probably should have such a system in place anyway, given the drilling that’s already going on within the park, in Mnazi Bay. Wentworth Resources Ltd. actually just started work on its fifth well in the concession area, an onshore exploratory well, targeting “Miocene and Oligocene sandstones.” Camping at Ruvula we could see both Wentworth and BG’s drilling rigs, on either side of us, their lit platforms extending into the night sky – stationary, unlike the dhows.

It’s pretty crazy because even Tanzanian officials are acknowledging that the offshore natural gas fields are going to convert Tanzanian from an agricultural-based economy to one centered around the natural gas industry. Tanzania is expected to eventually see its proven reserves of natural gas rise nearly tenfold, from the estimated seven trillion cubic feet of natural gas to 60 trillion cubic feet. The industry is saying that with energy markets in the Middle East and Asia, Tanzania and Mozambique may one day “rival Qatar and Australia as the world’s biggest suppliers of liquefied natural gas (LNG).” Well, we’ll see. I guess they start with the roads. But while we’re at it, can we try to do something about the municipal water?…