Mazumbai ISP prep days

Just got back from Mazumbai doing ISP prep stuff and it was definitely an experience getting there and back. Me and my friend Maggie went to go buy the bus tickets which was completely chaotic in itself but once we finally found the TINY little office we bought the bus tickets and showed up there the next morning at 530 am. What we thought was going to be somewhat like a greyhound in the U.S. turned out to be more or less like a glorified Dola Dola. Getting out of Arusha to Moshi, which is usually an hour, took 2 hours because of the amount of stops we took to pick up more people along the way. To pick up people sometimes the bus would stop but more often than not it would slow down enough for people to make a running start and hop on. There were even three people who took piki pikis up to the door of the bus and jumped on the bus when it was stopped waiting to turn. By the time we got to Moshi to have our one and only pee break, every seat in the bus had been filled yet during the next 4 to 5 hours we kept picking up more and more people until the bus was PACKED. There were people standing and sitting in every possible area and at one point I realized the woman standing next to me had three chickens in her purse. Basically everybody and their chickens were on this bus. Whenever we passed or got near a police outpost the ticket guy would make this "shh shh shh" sound and motion for everybody to sit and crouch down so that we wouldn't get pulled over by the police. By the fifth hour all of us were exhausted from a very limited amount sleep the night before, a early and stressful morning, and we were hot, carsick, cramped, our butts were sore from a constant stream of speed bumps ( the only form of speed control in Tanzania) and ready to be off that bus but we still had two more hours on a cramped hot bus with a bag of beans falling on me and Maggies head (some guy had put his plastic bag full of beans on the shelf about our head but bump after bump after bump the beans kept falling through the cracks). But after 7 hours of traveling on that bus we finally made it to Sony were this guy picked us all up and took us another 2 hours up the mountain. (not exactly the best drive either but at least it was pretty and not stuffy).

            Mazumbai as usual is beautiful and the eight people who are up here with me doing their own research are some of my best friends on the trip. We work so well together and interact like a little college family. Its so nice to be able to come home after a morning of work and feel totally comfortable to do whatever I please. Were all doing such different projects that its also been super interesting to learn about other peoples projects while also doing your own.

So my project is looking at the Valley bottom cash crops of Mgwashi and Sagara Villages and seeing how the growing of cash crops is affecting the soil quality of their farms as well the economic livelihoods of the farmers. Because cash crops usually take up more nutrients even with crop ration I’m hypothesizing that they have to use a lot more fertilizers and pesticides to combat nutrient and pest issues. This in turn I hypothesize is taking a big economic toll on the farmers because market prices aren’t the best. In doing only two days of research I think a lot of my hypothesis will be true. I have found that farmers who can’t afford fertilizers can only grow beans and if they can afford fertilizers they either use Dap, Uleah (both solid forms of fertlizer), or booster (a spray). Also because water flows along fault lines, the Valley bottom is the natural flow of water and because of this farmers are having problems with erosion. Because the crops they plant now can’t hold down the soil when the big rains come the soil is eroding very easily. To gather information I will be making the 1.5 hour trek down the mountain with my translator Abe and conducting mostly interviews with both the women and male farmers from Mgwashi and Sagara villages, then hiking 2 hours back up the mountain. I will also be taking soil samples from their farms to see the soil sizes and types and see if the soil is unanimously spread throughout the valley bottom or if there is a mix.

            Also mom I got you letters and since you have been asking I have gotten maybe 2 or 3 mosquito bites here…weird I know. But I did get my first bout of food poisoning and threw up with a fever for about 12 hours. I had been craving a pepper all of homestay because I was chopping them up everyday and in my exhausted hungry haze I bought and ate one forgetting that the number one rule here is don’t eat raw food… oh well live and learn! 

Chameleons were EVERYWHERE, literally dropping out of trees onto our laps, we saw chameleons turning color, having sex and sunbathing on our heads. One of my friends is doing his project on chameleons and knows a lot about them but he was super excited at the sheer abundance of them in Mazumbai and in the forest.