Week One in Tanzania

These posts describe my time in Tanzania, volunteering on a solid waste planning project through the USAID Feed the Future program. The main goals of my project is to facilitate public private dialogue related to policies and regulations for solid waste management. It is also to enhance the capacity of the private sector to be involved with waste management, including collection and processing. 


My first week in Tanzania is going very well! 

I spent Monday and Tuesday in Dar es Salaam in orientation at the ENGINE office (the project I’m working for) meeting the staff and learning about the overall project. My component of the project is focused on growth-enabling policies and building the relationship between the private and public sector in setting and implementing policies. For my particular project, I'm looking at policies related to waste management and working with businesses in the trash field. 

The first few days were challenging because I was very tired,there was a lot to get used to quickly, and there was a lot of sitting. I landed late on Sunday, didn’t get to the hotel until after midnight, and had to be ready to leave at 8am to go to the office. From Sunday until Thursday I basically spent all of my time on planes, in cars, in hotels, and offices, which was hard for me. On Wednesday I took a flight of 1.5 hours to Mbeya, the city I’m working with. The city’s population is around 430,000. Based on my quick research, this is bigger than Minneapolis and Oakland and smaller than Omaha and Miami.  

I was so happy to arrive here in Mbeya and get to work. It is very beautiful in this southwest part of the country. It is hilly and green and cooler than the capital. The weather has been perfect – 80's in the day, a little cool at night, sunny and beautiful other than some afternoon showers. The landscape in this part of the country reminds me of the western region of Honduras where I was in the Peace Corps, with the green hills, fields of corn and banana trees, scattered pine trees, and temperate climate. I am surprised by how much corn is here.

When I arrived here Wednesday afternoon, I met the project staff person I will be working with, Mdaba, and my counterpart Cleopa, who works for the City's Department of the Environment. After introductions, we went to City Hall and to the Department of the Environment offices to meet some of the government officials. On Thursday, we had some more meetings and then I spent most of the day with my counterpart going over documents, asking questions and getting a better sense of their solid waste operations. At my request, we also visited one of the bigger municipal markets so I could see the waste collection system. I was surprised by the large quantities of organic waste. There is no composting here but it something they aspire to. Cleopa is very visionary and wants to have a zero waste city. I hope to help them move toward this vision.

Friday was very interesting. In the morning we visited a recycling business owned by a young man who was very impressive. He collects bottles, cans, cardboard, and plastic film. His business collects, sorts, cleans, and packages the materials to be sold to various companies, both locally and internationally. In addition, he has plans to start collecting electronic waste and to start a composting facility but is facing challenges with securing permits and loans. 




After this, we visited one of the community groups that does trash collection. A few years ago, this city started outsourcing collection to community groups to improve collection rates. The groups collect the trash from individual homes and businesses and bring it to a centralized dumpster which is then collected by a city truck for disposal. The groups also provide street cleaning services.

In the afternoon we visited a rice miller who buys rice, mills it, and then sells it for consumption. This was fascinating for me, since I know nothing about rice. This is a rice producing region and the rice tastes better than probably any other rice I’ve had. The outputs of the rice milling machine are the rice, the powder, and the husks. The powder is sold to farmers for feedstock and the husks go to the cement kiln for fuel. However, the demand is not consistent and there is a great deal of excess supply of the husks. I didn’t comprehend the vast quantity of this material until we went behind the building to the storage area and I saw the mountain of husks, which is only a tiny fraction of the total amount in this area. They aren’t even in peak harvesting season, so this was not much compared to what they will have.

The owner of this business was also young and visionary. He has been researching options for how to put these rice husks to a beneficial use, such as making particle board or tiles. So far, he has not found any viable options. Rice husks are a good source of fuel but there is no facility in this region to process them. Composting is also an option, but again, there is no compost facility. In the absence of any good option, some goes to the cement kiln for fuel but the majority goes to the landfill. My work is cut out for me to help find options for all these materials!

On Saturday, Cleopa and I and a driver traveled a couple hours south to a place called God’s Bridge, which is a natural land bridge over a river. It was really cool to see. There was also a natural spring in the area which we visited. It was a really beautiful drive through the country and I enjoyed seeing more than just cities, which I’ve been in so far. I’ve never seen so many banana trees. We bought a very large bunch of plantains for about 45 cents.

Today I am getting some work done and resting. My hotel has a very nice area outside to sit which I really enjoy. Today there is a big soccer game in town and you can clearly hear the crowds cheering.

It’s so nice to be here!