Truely Tanzanian now!

This is a photo taken from the Mazengo Primary school today as part of the interview work

we are doing for the MIS Small Medium Entreprise piece of the overall MIS project . I love this photo! This young boy followed me around for a couple of minutes before I even realized it simply because he wanted to meet me...how sweet is that? I am not sure if it was the blond hair or what that compelled him but we managed to have a very nice english/swahili exchange and shook hands (his english was far better than my swahili)....then off he trotted to his class. Afterwards we realized that he actually skipped out of his current class just so he could come talk to us....boy oh boy, what a sweet heart!

Its was actually another very interesting day....yet again one of those days where we had one set plans which basically got thrown out the window about an hour into the day. Today was supposed to be a head's down day cranking out process charts but we got whammied with the announcement that we were off to visit 2 more schools today - a government run primary school (Mazengo) and a privately run secondary school (Jamhuri). We met more fantastic people and confirmed again that although most processes are very manual they are very well thought out and precisely followed. The main consensus here is that (at least with the folks we interviewed) everyone hopes eventually to have their data consolidated in some type of centralized system or database but its anyone's best guess when it will actually happen. In fact, today one of the headmasters actually told us that if we are going to get computers in the schools we ought to do it real soon otherwise it will be "harmful" to the outlook of the teachers (guess they might be tired of getting their hopes up). We told Double Masoud (our main TA from the university) that he needed to get cracking on the new system!

We also had an impromptu visit to the grocery store where I met an Indian woman who actually lived in Markham, Ontario (near the main IBM Canada Office) and whose in-laws still live there. That was kind of cool and then we met some street sellers selling some pretty neat Tanzanian arts....Sandip bought some carvings, Beth & I bought some hand drawn cards and prints. Every day we find new places in town and feel more and more like Dodomites!

The most fun of the day occured first thing this morning when Innocent Siriwa joined our update meeting bearing gifts. Everyone received their own bracelet and key chain which was accompanied with his personalized nickname for each of the team ... it was a half hour process but with Innocent you are sure to get your money's worth of entertainment. He is now fully versed in the complete american high five routine....and knighted us all as official Tanzanians from here on in!

k...need to get to my Dodoma wine....its begging me to drink up.

Another day at the office...

Today was fairly uneventful from a wow factor perspective. The team spent most of the day grinding through process mapping for the UDOM functional areas....(oh please let us get to the requirements stage soon!). At some points in time it truly felt like the blind leading the blind but in all honesty I think everyone is loving the challenge....sprinkled with a little humour and the odd dose of complete honesty when it all seems too much to take. Basically, we recalibrate and continue on our path of making great progress....its all good! We also managed to sneak in a quick "demonstration hand" of Euchre to get Lucia trained up...this made her happy since she is fairly competitive (translation - she doesnt mess around) in card playing. We also explored some more cultural differences.... ie. What people from different cultures say, what they actually mean and how it is interpreted. For example, in our 4some we all say different things to mean "I understand"...the Indians say "I think so..or this is true", The North Americans say, " I got it...", the Tanzanians say " it's fine...".

Another langauge difference is when talking about having a meal. The Slovakians & Indians will say " I will take lunch at 1pm", the North Americans say, " I will have lunch at 1pm..". Today we had to reconfirm that were were not actually "taking" anything to Mikumi National Park on the weekend...although we agreed to have lunch there.

Culturally speaking....you really need to be aware of the words you are using and how it translates for the people you are working or speaking with.

PS - this is another great shot from the University office, second floor.....what an amazing view of the clouds and the various mountain ranges both near and on the horizon.

Patience is a virtue...

Yesterday was a day which required much patience. Of course they day began by drawing up the plan of tasks and activities we intended to accomplish by the end of week to ensure that we were meeting our interim project deliverables - a very proactive activity indeed. This type of planning is reassuring for type A's like me and also provides me great pleasure in being able to check off those "completed" items. It's an important activity (yes, a form of validation)...and I will even go so far as to add things to be list that I did by chance only so I can cross them off the list....I know there are others out there like me but likely too shy to admit it....in any case the main point I want to make is that yesterday we didnt accomplish anything we set out to. Everything we planned did not happen, things we didnt expect to happen happened and at the end of the day I felt somewhat frustrated. I had to reflect on the days events and think about the cultural differences and remind myself that I really needed to take things in stride. After a good work out, an inpromptu "evening meeting", playing a killer game of Euchre the night ended well. Dan and Beth were skunked 10 - nil by Sandip and I .....how sweet!

PS - all but 2 of the team is trained up for Euchre....and the TA's from the University want to learn how to play....this is good!

Mystery Solved...

Well we finally met up with Brian Polkinghorne yesterday! Brian is an Australian chap connected with the Anglican church & who works out of Mackay House in the city centre. Mackay house is part of the Diocese and is a local health clinic and I was made aware of him through a work colleague who connected me to Bob from Markham....what a small world (thanks Nadine and Bob!).

We started looking for Brian the day after we arrived however it took 3 or 4 trips over the course of the week back to Mackay House before we finally bumped into him...it was starting to feel like a bit of a scavenger hunt - each time we went there we found out a little bit more information and felt closer to our goal! First trip, we learned the hours of operation. Second trip, confirmed that Brian did in fact exist but was not there and we should come back the next day around 9am - confirming this information took the efforts of 4 people using their bits and pieces of Swahili and effective hand signals or body parts. Third trip, no luck at first, but retrieved a phone number from a kind man who was curious about why we kept showing up. Finally we were about to leave and turned around and low and behold there he was....only to find out through conversation that he had been having breakfast 2 tables down from us at the New Dodoma Hotel! In any case, we are glad we finally tracked him down and will have a sit down conversation with him early next week to find out more about the work he is doing and some of the local regional sites he might be able to advise us on.

We also had another new experience yesterday while at the University. We had noticed an ambulance at one point down below where we sit and didnt pay too much attention until suddenly there was what sounded like a very large choir singing a church hymn in swahili. We went to see what was going on and it was quite a moving event - there had to be 500 people gathered around the ambulance in honor of someone who had passed away. I had chills watching and even as I write about it now I feel goose bumps. We found out later that one of the students meet an untimely death and this was the ceremonial farewell of the student for the family. It went on for at least 15 minutes and we watched in amazement and respect for the tradition. I think it gave all of us in the room a moment of pause....life can be short but there is still alot of love in the world.

off to work now.

What a game!!!

Today we managed to catch a live soccer (football as it is known here) match between The Dar Es Salaam Lions (Simba) and the Dodoma Police...man what an experience that was! We took a cab from the hotel to the stadium and joined the throngs of fans in the mile long line up to get tickets for 2000 Tshs each (less than $2!!!). At one point I thought there was no way we were going to get in but through shere diligence and football fanatacism on the part of Sandip he bullied his way to the front of the line (proper thing to do) waving his shillings in the air to get the attention of the gate master to ensure that we got our 7 tickets to get in. We had a little celebration ceremony on the spot because it was so amazing that he actually got the tickets! Mind you he had to risk getting his wallet pick-pocketed but was saved by Dan who had his back! (we definitely have to stick together here...)

On the way in to the stadium we were drawing quite alot of attention amongst the locals and as I was walking by one of them grabbed my hair to touch it....guess they dont see too many blondes in this neck of the woods....its no problem though, a courteous JAMBO! and all is good.

The game was fabulous....the crowd really got into it and we figured out right away that we were sitting on the Dar side...there just happened to be more seats there but we did go in with the strategy that we would simply vote for the team that the crowd around us was cheering for! It was too bad that Dodoma lost but the Dar team really stepped it up at the end and we managed to catch 3 goals although the first one didnt count as one of the team was off side....definetly the highlight of today.

Although, we were pleasantly surprised by an onsite dance troupe and bongo players at the hotel tonight....we saw most of it but had to go to dinner. It was very good african dancing that really mesmerized us....Roku was the brave soul that got up with the dancers and touched the fire and then did some fire eating...yes, just your standard day in Tanzania....

Visit to meet Justinian's family

Last night we were invited to Justinian's home to meet his wife (aptly named Happiness) and his 2 boys Eriky and Edgar....talk about adorable! OMG they were the cutest kids ever...(this pic is of Edgar, Justinian & Happiness..need to add Eriky in another blog...I just couldnt resist this photo....)

We had a traditional Tanzanian dinner prepared by Happiness - chips, fried banana, chicken, salad of cucumbers and tomato with some pretty potent piri piri peppers. And of course washed down with a few Kili (beer). It was a very lovely evening watching the kids play with some of the IBM trinkets we brought with....amazing that the kids could turn a bookmark, tape measure and a pen into a simple, yet effective, airplane contraption in mere minutes...budding engineers!

We didnt stay too late and came back to the hotel where a few of us congregated to embark on the Euchre training sessions....I wouldnt be doing my Canadian duty if I didnt try to teach a few of the teammates how to play Euchre...definitely a must-know transferrable skill! So luckily a few of us knew how to play and now 2/3 of the group is trained up.,...by this time next week we'll be in full on Euchre tournaments...this should be good fun - the competition begins!

Who woulda thunk it!

OMG, yesterday I was the happiest person in Dodoma....we discovered that Dodoma is an emerging wine region and managed to arrange a wine tour with the whole group. We rented a bus for 100,000 Tshs...which worked out to about $10 each...it took about and hour to get there on a fairly bumpy dirt road for most of the way but we saw a few villages and a pack of donkeys...yes, the real kind! I would add a picture but it is not working right now...(grrr very frustrating!!)

So we met with Adam Njovu the general Manager of the CETAWICO (Cantina Sociale di Dodoma) and he spent an incredible amount of time with us explaining the history of the birth of the winery and how it has grown over the last 4 years. We noticed that there were no vineyards near the winery and learned that they actually buy the grapes from the local farmers who are incented to harvest grapes in the Dodoma area....Adam will actually make field visits to test the grapes to ensure they have enough sugar content. They hope that within time more farmers in the area will start to grow grapes. The winery is actually held by an Italian company and Adam did some training in Italy. They export 70% of their finished product to South Africa and a good 25% to local distilleries for the distribution of hard liquor (this gets rid of any spoiled wine and reduces the amount of waste). Adam let us try Sharyde, Sharyde Reserve, Presidential & Presidential Reserve in both the vat and the barrel.....very generous tastings and we didnt want to leave. The funny part was that this was Sandip's first ever try at wine....what a way to start! We took photos of him to commenmorate his entrance into the world of wine - no turning back now! Of course we bought a few bottles to bring home but chances are they may not make it!

What a great afternoon!

Catching up over the last few days...

Alot has happened since Friday...as a matter of fact we have been going non stop since we arrived and so I am going to do a few short posts to get caught up.

Friday turned out to be a great day visiting 2 distinctly different schools: Msalato Secondary School and Martin Luther School.

Msalato was a public girls residential school for Form 1 - 6. The UDOM MIS/SME Team met with the headmistress Ms. Anisia Nenze and spent about 1.5hours chatting about the admissions/registration & tracking systems used at the school....in a nutshell everything is done completely manually - starting with taking a ruler and drawing columns in a note book with handwritten titles and writing in the student details line by line....the book was dated back to the 1970s tracking students in no particular order right up until 2008 admissions...computers (about 3) only appear to be used by the admin staff and only use word processing (the computer lab had only 4 working machines and several that were unusable). Anisia was a lovely, calm natured woman who at first seemed reluctant to share info with us. However, Beth did a great job of asking clear questions and pulling the information we needed (I take copius notes)...all said, we gained great perspective on the challenges faced by the school: 700 residential students, 45 teachers (25 who live on site), usually 50-55 students per class, very tight in the dorms....70 Tanzania shillings per year to attend (alot of money for the daughters of peasants)

Conversely, Martin Luther school (a private primary school) was at the opposite end of the spectrum. Firstly, the building was 3 stories high and spread over a fairly large well landscpaded campus. 950 students, 550 who are residential and the remaining are day students. 550,000 Tshs per term (3) or for day students about 900,000 Tshs per year (still alot of money for the parents of these kids - mainly diplomats, doctors, university profs etc). The headmaster ( Emmanuel ) was very young and very progressive in his approach and thinking. When Dr Mvuma commented and referred to Emmanuel as a "young guy" he immediately retorted back that he was not a guy! We were all a little taken aback not knowing what the issue was but figured out later that Emmanuel was only 26 yrs old and was already the headmaster of the school! He was very interesting in that he was from a Masai tribe near Arusha yet was dressed in very trendy clothes. Although he said he dresses in traditional Masai tribal clothes when he is home visiting his parents. Computer use was by all of the admin staff however teachers were not tracking grades or attendance through any programs yet. Mainly 2 spreadsheets were used for tracking: admissions of students providing registration numbers & fee payment...but the twoo were not linked into a central database yet. The computer lab had 45 working computers and were used mainly to teach the children how to use word and play games!

hopefully we'll be able to visit at least 2 more schools next week.

UDOM MIS Project Update - Week1

Here is the view from our office of only a of the University campus. What an amazing week! It seems impossible that we have been on site at UDOM for 5 days. We have accomplished alot. When I look at our project plan we still have miles to go....lol! thankfully we are a team of 10 and everyone brings great skills to the table so am confident we will get there.

As each day goes by for our MIS/SME team we come away feeling that all our days on site have been very productive (and we sprinkle a litte fun in there too). When I think of back to the tour and coming away feeling in awe and (yes, admittedly) a little fear of what we were about to embark on and see where we are now I feel very good about it. We have spent the week getting to know our UDOM collegues, working directly with 3 Tutorial Assisstants (Masoud Masoud or Double Masoud as I like to call him, Tabu Kondo & Frederick Chali), interviewing with Finance/Accounting, Admissions, Library (more next week with HR & Procurement), speaking with Justinian and finding out more and more about how the University runs. We are finding that it is mainly a paper based system but each department is very well aware of where their troubles are and want to make some improvements. The Tanzanians have been incredibly kind and are very willing to spend time with us.

Today is a really exciting day because our sub team is going to visit an all girls secondary schoool to see what type of vision is possible to start linking the full education system in Tz...a very daunting task but the will of these people is inspiring so anything is possible!

off to work now....

First Day on the UDOM Project - Karibu!

The last 2 days have been a whirlwind in Dodoma but have been absolutely incredible. Monday the team spent the day touring the campus of the University of Dodoma (UDOM). We had had a few briefings and read some documentation in advance about what to expect but we were still amazed by what we saw first hand. The Tanzanians are definitely dreaming big and going for it! The vastness of the campus, the number of construction workers on site and the buildings still under construction were absolutely mind boggling and I really spent most of the time feeling in awe of the people, the land and the entire scope of the University project plan.

Firstly though, in order to get to UDOM it is approximatley a 15 minute drive to the campus. The roads out of town are paved but not quite all the way in to the main buildings. We follow a dirt road for about half the trek. By some standards this part of the road is pretty good however we did have to wait for a vehicle to intricately manage itself around a large ditch this morning; we had no problem since we are in quite a nice Land Cruiser (although I am holding onto to the upper grab handle for stability the entire way).

The campus in all its entirety spans 15 Hectares - it is amazingly large and seems to go on forever. We started Monday by touring each college (eg College of Education, College of Humanities & Social Sciences & College of Informatics & Virtual Education) checking out the main teaching and lecture buildings for each including the dorms/housing & cafeterias for the students. Many of the buildings were still under construction as the University continues its plans to build forward to eventually accommodate up to 40,000 students in the next 3 years.

We met many people and struggled with their names but in general are finding everyone we meet extremely hospitable, friendly and generous with their time. Our main contact is Dr Justinian Anatory - he is such a cool guy and incredibly knowledgable. Like many of the existing Profs at UDOM he came from the University of Dar Es Salaam last year. Dr Justinian as we call him is the Dean of the School of Informatics and Virtual Education - the location of our project. We are split up into 4 main project teams working with Dr Justinian and his Tutorial Assistants - The UDOM MIS team, the MIS for Small Medium Entreprise, The Learning Management Systems team and the Cloud Computing Team. I am on the MIS project with 3 other colleagues however we are finding that there is alot of overlap and we are all staying pretty connected as a team to ensure we minimize scope creep.

Today was actually Day One! on the project and I believe the consensus was it was a day of accomplishment. Personally I felt like we accomplished more than I expected but was really ready for anything and was really pleased. The 4 teams are split into 2 project offices and so the first order of priority was to get set up in the offices, get on internet (I think we are going to give up on this one pretty quickly), get access to UDOM email (should happen tomorrow), printer access etc etc.

Our MIS team spent the morning building some new relationships with the Tutorial Assistants - largely getting name details straight so we can recall who is who. We learned alot from the group of 10 TAs - the story of their names (Masoud Masoud who is named after his grandfather (I call him Double Masoud) and Frederick Chali who actually goes by the nick name Fletcher...). Many of them were from Dar Es Salaam but we got an introduction to other parts of Tanzania both familiar (Kilimanjaro) and unfamiliar (Tanga, Musoma, Kibora). We also learned some history about the current President Kikwete and the Founding Father of Tanganyika and Zanzibar union which form Tanzania today - Former President Julius Nyerere.

By far for me personally, the best part of the day was meeting the Vice Chancellor of UDOM - Professor Iddris Kukula. The Principal of UDOM - Professor Mvungi & Dr. Justinian arranged for a special visit between the IBM Project team with the Vice Chancellor (serious Top Dog) and it was quite the experience. When we were greeted into his office we first observed the Stately furniture....it was opulent without strings...but that aside it was the man himself who was so impressive. It was evident by Tanzanian standards that he had obvious status in the room but I was mesmerized by his presence and charisma. He actually reminded me of my father in law - a person large in stature and presence. He was a very knowledgeable, charming, calming man who seemed to always be in the know and in complete control. He used simple but concise language to talk about the UDOM project and described how they managed from the beginning (barely a pencil) to where they are now....it's really unbelievable. He also talked about his career and his education - he completed his Masters degree in Australia but low and behold I found out when I introduced myself that finished his undergrad in Canada! Can you imagine my surprise that after I said I was Denise from Canada he asked me if I was familiar with Sudbury of all places!! Laurentian University.....alas, I was bonding with the Vice Chancellor! What a day....

On the topic of food and drink: Our food staple seems to be Kuku wa-lee (chicken and rice)...not sure how much more I can take of that but tomorrow we are definitely looking around town for some restaurant alternatives. I dont think we have much choice at UDOM - it looks like a fairly fixed menu (chicken & rice, fish & rice (yes, head & tail on......not for me - well not yet anyhow), ugala, rice and beans, some sort of beef (really not sure)...you get the drift.

There are 4 kinds of beer which we have been sampling - Kilimanjaro (my fave), Safari, Nduvo, Serengeti ....all good when cold (you have to be sure to ask for ya bia baridi). We also tried Dodoma red wine which was actually very good. We plan to visit the winery at some point and check it out more thoroughly.

Link to UDOM,
http://www.udom.ac.tz/

PS - Karibu means Welcome! in Swahili

First few days...

Finally made it to Tanzania!...32 hours later but at least made it in one piece. As per the way things were going had to endure yet one more plane change in Nairobi but at least the flight was on time! Landed at the Dar Es Salaam airport by 9:30 but traffic was pretty heavy so did not make it to the hotel until after lunch. Met all my team mates for the first time which was pretty neat after 3 months of weekly calls....it was easy to figure out who was who based on the voices.

We decided to trek back into the city centre as a group to figure out currency exchange and cell phones. We each have a cell phone for local calls which is helpful. We also went to the local Shoprite for water and discovered a heathly sampling of South African wine....figured things were about to start getting better by the minute!

It is strange getting used to the TZ schillings....the exchange rate is 1330 Tz schillings for every dollar...for $300USD I received 399,000....2 large bottles of water and 1 750ml of wine was about 29000.

It was extremely hot and humid in Dar - felt like about 35degrees

We stayed at the Mediterraneo Hotel just outside of Dar and on the Ocean and had a great dinner followed by the monthly party the hotel hosts (this went on til 6am!) Unfortunately we had to be on the bus by 8:30am so many of us went to bed much earlier than that (of course I slept in due to jet lag...but made it on the bus in the nick of time)...it was a very very long bus ride but very scenic and the bus was air conditioned.

We did not arrive in Dodoma until 6pm and hadto rush off to a dinner at 7pm with the University Deans. It was a formal dinner and we were required to wear our suits...although we were told it would be fairly casual from here on in.

Attaching a couple of pictures taken from Precision Air Flight from Nairobi to Dar....can you guess which Mountain this is?

Ah, the joys of travelling. Well I knew things didnt look good when before I even left a 100 mile radius of my home only to find myself delayed out of Toronto! Despite the fact it was middle of April and a gorgeous spring day apparently "maintenance" issues can occur. The hour and half delay wouldnt have been so terrible if it didnt affect my transfer flight from Zurich to Nairobi however, you guessed it, it did. Once in the air everything was fine ( seat mate was tolerable :-)) but I arrived in Zurich to find out I had missed my 9:30am connecting flight and was now rebooked on a Flight that transferred out of London Heathrow Airport. Oh joy oh bliss...not only do I get a 4 hour stop in Zurich airport (yes Zurich is lovely) I also get to backtrack west to head east - makes perfect sense....the best part is that I also get a 3 hour stop over in London to change planes and catch a flight to Nairobi to have a 2 hour lay over there to change planes again to finally get to Dar Es Salaam a good 13 hours later than originally planned.

Just goes to show you....the best laid plans!

Wish my luggage luck that it finds me in Dar.

Clearly I am a novice blogger. Yes, I have tried to make several updates over the last 2 weeks and failed...hopefully now I have it right.

Leaving for Tanzania today...no more sleeps! This is it. The good thing is that I am much more calm today than yesterday. Suffice it to say I was bouncing off the walls yesterday hoping I had everything set up and ready to go and running last minute errands.

We had our last team call on Tuesday and most of the team is travelling today and we will meet up in Dar Es Salaam on Friday night. This will be the first time any of us have met in person.

The weather in Dodoma is about 27 degress Celsius with a chance of showers Friday. We have a bus set up to take us the 6 hour journey to Dodoma on Sunday (chance of thunder showers)...should be an interesting ride. I hear the road to Dodoma is pretty good.

Have had many of you help me out to get ready for this trip. So thanks to all of you who either provided me with documentation on requirements gathering, gave me tips about travelling in Tanzania or simply helped me stay sane and focused on what I needed to get done.

cheers....next note is coming from TZ.

Decided to finally get into the world of blogging today since this will be the easiest way to keep friends and family up to date on my upcoming experiences in Tanzania starting April 16th.

I have booked a flight from Toronto International Airport via Swiss Air on Thursday April 16th pit-stopping in Zurich and then flying into Dar Es Salaam via Nairobi at 8:10pm on Friday April 17th.

13 days to go! I can't believe the days have passed by so quickly. Thankfully I feel very well prepared logistically. I have my entry visa secured, will get my last 2 shots this coming Tuesday, flight arrangemnts finalized, packing is under control. Still trying to get organized from a work perspective & wrapping up projects in NA and preparing for the UDOM project (University of Dodoma).

Our team consists of 10 IBMers from 7 different countries. I am the only Canadian on Tanzania team 4 but will be working with folks from the US (3), Slovakia (1), Japan(1), India (2), Australia (1) & Germany(1). Our team name on the Corporate Services Corps (NING) website is Dodoma Kikoa 1 and this is how we stay connected as a team. We have a fair bit of pre-work that has been required of us and I am finding it challenging keeping up to date on that but am making some good progress. The pre-work topics range from in country logistics to articles on TZ, cultural adaptability topics, consulting and client learnings, & communication topics. All very interesting!

We will be working on a project for the University of Dodoma. Dodoma is approximately a 6 hour bus ride (hopefully with few breakdowns and decent roads!) from Dar. When I arrive in Dar Es Salaam I will stay both Friday and Saturday nights. This will allow for a day or so of site seeing and settling in before embarking on the trip to Dodoma.

We have received our SOW for the project and it looks pretty interesting...more on that to come.