Great, GREAT news! My trip to Tanzania is set, flight and all! Last Friday, I was notified that I received the Gordon Summer Fellowship grant through Newcomb-Tulane - I am so thankful! After revising my application just about 100 times, it was such a wonderful feeling when I read the e-mail. The $4,000 I received will cover all of my expenses, including the start of my new side project! I figured, since I re-wrote this over and over, I'd just post the majority of my application to update all that I'm doing in Tanzania now. After e-mailing back and forth for weeks and weeks I now have a solid plan! 

The Opportunity to Return

This summer, I would like to gain hands on experience with organizations that work to alleviate poverty through resourceful design and local entrepreneurship. From May 29thst until August 7th, I plan to return to Arusha, Tanzania to volunteer with three organizations. The first two I will be working with are engineering based organizations, Twende and Global Cycle Solutions (GCS). Both work to explore and develop local technologies, with a focus on agricultural products. They also encourage Tanzanians to turn their own ideas into reality by providing resources and guidance for development. The rest of my time will be spent with Faraja, a vocational training center that works to rehabilitate young female victims of human trafficking. Faraja offers women and their children a place to live for a one year period while providing cooking and sewing classes along with tutoring in several academic areas. With these skills, the majority of the women who leave the center are able to find jobs or start their own businesses.

The Engineer  My work with Twende and GCS will focus on running needs assessments and designing and testing new technologies for rural communities in northern Tanzania. Some of the technologies they are working on currently include: an electrical generator utilizing draft animals, solar water heaters made from waste materials, and bicycle powered maize shellers. Along with ongoing projects, one of their biggest combined efforts at the moment is building a workshop that will serve as a home base to both organizations. With this new space, locals will have an opportunity to share and develop their own ideas. One of my main goals is to expand use of Global Cycle Solutions’ maize sheller product. Traditionally, when maize (the main staple of Tanzanian diet) is harvested, the ears of maize are placed in a large bag and are then beaten with a stick to loosen the kernels for use in cooking popular local dishes such as ugali and makande. To ease this labor intensive task, the maize sheller attaches to most bicycles and can fill a 90-kg sack of maize in 40 minutes by stationary peddling. This design is a perfect example of an innovative yet simple solution that turns a labor intensive task, found all throughout sub-Saharan Africa, into an efficient, self-employing opportunity. By increasing market awareness through village demonstrations and community outreach, I plan to spread the word about what both organizations have to offer. I will document my efforts and analyze what product introduction methods have a larger impact on the spread of the designs. After exchanging multiple e-mails about my interests and past experiences in Africa, the founder of Twende, Jim Elsworth, as well as the founder of GCS, Jodie Wu, were delighted to have me join their efforts and agreed that my time will be valuable asset to their team.
The Cook Along with gaining engineering experience, I’d like to spend three days a week working with the women and children living at the Faraja center. Here, I plan to tutor the women in mathematics and evaluate what else is needed within their present curriculum. My main project with Faraja, however, is one of learning and observing, rather than teaching. Since I’ve fallen in love with Tanzanian cuisine, I am going to create a cookbook to display all of the wonderful dishes the women are taught to make at the center (from basic local traditions to upscale restaurant recipes). With this project, I will be actively involved with the daily cooking classes the center offers. From picture taking to recipe writing, I plan to describe many of the dishes that define Tanzanian cuisine. Faraja’s creator, Martina Siara, and her assistant, Mike Sanders, replied to my inquiry about this project with enthusiasm, saying it was an excellent suggestion that they are happy for me to pursue. I am still looking into getting the recipe book published upon its completion and I plan to sell them upon my return to continue supporting the women of Faraja. Faraja is in the process of building a second classroom, so any funds raised through the cookbook will go directly to furnishing their ever-growing facilities. Currently, I plan to ask local New Orleans restaurants to support my efforts. Any businesses that support my cause will be listed in the sponsor pages at the end of the book. All supporters of my trip will also receive a complimentary copy upon its completion. I hope that the cookbook will provide a permanent source of income, increasing sustainability and growth at the center.

It is also crazy that Mardi Gras is already over! It was nice having Colin here on the weekends since he worked only 2 hours away from New Orleans, definitely much better than the usual. Because of this and just the general wonderfulness of the season, I had a blast and have achieved even more bead mongering than any other year! I have so many toys and Mardi Gras goodies for the kids I teach now- they won't run out of good behavior prizes now, that's for sure.  My favorites this year were Krewe du Vieux, Muses, Endymion, Thoth, and Zulu (of course). The weather wasn’t perfect, but it wasn’t bitter cold so I can’t complain.  Next year’s goal is to have awesome outfits! It is amazing what kind of outfits come out during Mardi Gras – chicken suits, alligator outfits, and footie pajamas are things that don’t surprise me during carnival season. I am really hoping I get more visitors next year, such a necessary NOLA experience!  This year was also cool because there were four BME’s that all turned 21 right before Mardi Gras, so we were able to have a nice BBQ day before the parades to celebrate with everyone. I feel so lucky to have such a great group of friends in my major (and outside it!). 

Now, classes are really in full swing and time is going to go by even quicker. Two more weeks until spring break then there’s Easter break, finals and in 95 days I’ll be in Tanzania!!! Spring break should be really fun because I am leading a trip down to Miami since I liked it so much freshman year. We will be working in the Everglades, Biscayne Bay and Chapman Partnership homeless shelter.

Now for the best part: pictures!

So I am now officially 21! All I can say is I'm feeling old :p I cannot believe that I am a junior already and that it's the end of February! Not to mention, every time I check on facebook, people I know are in the process of or have gotten engaged/married/ had babies (congrats to everyone!!!!) !  It is such a shocker how fast time flies.

Anyways, the rest of my winter break was wonderful. I went to a New Year's Eve wedding with the Spillane's in Nola (imagine that!) which was wonderful. I also enjoyed lots of time with my mom and got to visit my pops and the rest of the family. It was especially nice having Ash-girl, my Tanzania roomie, come visit my hometown! She got a tour of little ol' Arcade, my high school, Niagara Falls and even got to see the (soon to be) famous Caleb Spaulding play music in Buffalo! It was great seeing my Duke buddies from the trip this summer when I dropped Ash- always nice to catch up. Then, I finally got to see my sister on my drive back down as well. I love when I get to see my siblings!! 

School has started off really well this semester. My classes are all interesting and I'm learning two new computer programs right now: LabView and Abaqus. I'm really trying to get a good range and introduction to the bigger software packages they use in industry today, Yay for trying to be useful when I graduate! My classes are mostly project based this semester which is a total change up from what I've had so far. From this point on that's really all it's going to be. With team design and the research thesis we all have to write, no more little homework assignments due each class. I am now going to be in the lab a lot more trying to get some work done on my project on blood separation which I'm really excited about. It's been really neat learning about microfabrication and I'm hoping I can really make a contribution.


So far, I've managed to pack in some fun things on the weekends as you can see below :) Trying to take advantage of the three semesters I have left!

SHRIMPING- a day before my birthday Colin, Aubrey, and I went to Alabama to visit one of my favorite family friends, Crazy Linda! Her son in law was able to take us out on the boat just for fun and it was truly a blast! We went out on the water from around 1:00-6:00 and in between we were able to see how real shrimpin' in the south works. The pictures definitely show much more than words can! I am excited to see if I can shrimp again during the actual season! For now, our freezer is stocked with three big bags of shrimp- yum!

Ever since I arrived back in the States in August, I’ve been scheming ways to once again return to the region I’ve become so fond of! Dr. Lee, as amazing as he is already, gave me a name of a non-profit that he thought I’d really like- Twende. When I returned to the U.S., I looked it up online and sent Twende an e-mail saying I was really interested in what their initiatives were, and wanted to see if there’d be room for me to help in any way. After a series of emails with the founder, Jim Elsworth, I am now set on returning to Tanzania from the beginning of June until the middle of August. It is an interesting time with Twende as Jim is working to gain sustainability for his NGO, a challenge faced by all non-profits. In an agreement with another organization, Global Cycle Solutions (GCS), they are working together to make a new workshop for entrepreneurial design.  GCS was founded by an MIT graduate, Jodie Wu, and they focus to make bike accessories that allow individuals to gain work as contractors. Their most successful products so far include a corn sheller as well as a bike operated cell phone charger.

So what will I be doing?

Working with mechanical engineers, I will be learning all about how they started their non-profits, the biggest challenges they face, and see where the skills I’ve acquired so far will fit in to both organizations. I am already set to live with Jodie for my stay, so I have become truly excited for the summer! I hope to gain a better understanding of the process of turning a great idea into an actual product and I think the most interesting part will be working with the locals and adjusting to a setting where things can’t necessarily be ordered easily or afforded.

Another exciting factor will be returning and seeing many of the people I met this past summer with EWH. I am very excited to be visiting my host family and am hoping we can negotiate some Swahili lessons so I can really practice. My host sister is in college in Dar es Salaam now so I think it would be really fantastic to visit her university. Along with my family, I am also very eager to return to Cradle of Love, the baby orphanage I was able to volunteer at a few times while living in Arusha. The home has over 30 babies now all under the age of 4. The goal of the orphanage is to take care of the babies that are delivered to them either until their family can once again take care of them or give them a caring environment and find another home once they get older. I am hoping that if I can fundraise enough, I'll be able to donate to the orphanage as well!

Another semester has flown by and my lack of posts is a bit depressing, but I'll try to sum up some of the cool things that happened this fall:)  Classes and work have of course kept me busy, busy, busy. I started working as a tennis coach on Saturdays for A's and Aces 8 and under team which was really fun! The kids are all on a beginner level so our kids have the same starting experience as the kids lucky enough to be in the country clubs. I ended up taking time off as a lab tech due to general sleep deprivation and my classes have just kept getting harder, so I've just been trying to squeeze in hours when I can.