All of the Lights

Classes are coming along nicely! I am in my 2^nd week of Swahili classes and today our class travelled to the soko (market) at Tengeri in Usa River to buy fruits and vegetables for the cafeteria at the training center.  We were given 2000 shillings each, which equates to about $1.25.  To give a feel for the prices in Tanzania, I bought 3 giant avocados at the market for 500 shillings, which equates to about 10 cents per avocado. Needless to say, I returned from the market with a large amount of fresh fruit but more importantly, an improved Swahili vocabulary and a small taste of the price bargaining that goes on in the market every day.

A couple of more interesting notes from the trip:

1)      Venders have massive piles of used shoes and clothes for sale, presumably from donations by foreign nations.  

2)      The market and the trash pile are contiguous – waste from the market is thrown in to a trash pile that is right next to some of the venders.

3)      Avocados here are phenomenal.  Nothing says friendship like peeling an avocado and sharing with 10 other people.

Driving from Usa River to Tengeri Market

Engineering labs and lessons are also going well.  Right now, I am learning general overviews for a lot of the equipment common in hospitals here: vacuum pumps, oximeters, ECGs, oxygen concentrators, etc.  In lab, we are working on building power supplies to convert the 230 Volt AC wall outlets in Tanzania into a smaller usable DC voltage that can be used to power medical devices.  Wall outlets in the US are generally 110/120 Volts AC, and the voltage difference between donated equipment in the US and the wall outlets in Tanzania could cause power supply issues that I will be capable of troubleshooting and repairing within the next few weeks.

Circuit board for the variable power supply Mikkel and I built in lab

Holding the variable power supple in the lab classroom

On a similar note, power in Tanzania is highly variable – there are often multiple power outages each day, generally lasting only a few minutes but sometimes much longer.  At first, these always surprised me at my homestay when all of the lights suddenly went out, but I am getting much more used to them.  They are simply a part of life here.  Last night, the power went out at around 7pm and didn’t return until early this morning, which meant two things:

1)      Mikkel and I went to bed very early since it is very difficult to delay sleeping without artificial light (a healthy dose of basketball and volleyball yesterday also contributed to the early bedtime).

2)      The stars were phenomenal.

Here’s to hoping for power when I need it during engineering lab the next few weeks and hoping for more starry nights when I don’t.  All of the lights are out again now, so I’d better go.  Kwaheri!