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I set up an old digital camera connected to my laptop through USB and had it take a picture every 10 seconds. I managed to get about 2 hours worth of pictures before the laptop's battery ran out. Stitched together, they form a nice time lapse movie of the last sunrise in 2007, as seen in Omurushaka, Tanzania. The actual movie is of a very high quality but my slow connection forces me to upload a low-quality, compressed version.

So, here's an overview of some things that I did in the last 2 months:

Seen millions of flamingos at Lake Nakuru (Kenya).

Gazed across the vastness of Kenya's rift valley.

Gone souvenir-shopping in Nairobi's Maasai Market.

Crossed Lake Victoria on a night ferry.

And last but not least also a little work:

Among other things, we made bricks to use as insulative elements for better stoves. It was a lot of experimenting, but the pilot is moving along smoothly.

More updates might follow -- at least I can take pictures again.

A woman cooking. Most people (>95% of the population) use fuelwood for cooking, and most use only the simplest of stoves, a construction called "3 stones" -- three stones that support the pot while an open fire burns underneath.

This is a somewhat improved stove that retains more heat and thus uses significantly less fuelwood. The villager that built it simply unearthed an anthill, hollowed it out and carved an opening in the side for the fuelwood. The clay created by the ants seems to be at least as durable as man-made clay.

Measuring fuelwood consumption by counting and measuring all the wood that is used during the course of a day... Of course, a lot of people gather around to see what weird things the foreigners are doing.

Some villagers...

The full moon illuminates an ocean of puffy clouds.

Rain announces itself with heavy clouds.

An early morning sky filled with clouds.

I wanted to stay and watch the sunset, but we had to move on because driving cross-country at night is dangerous.

This is nothing new: China has been involved in Africa for quite a while and is steadily increasing its influence on the continent. In Tanzania, Chinese companies have various infrastructure contracts. I could recently witness one such project, a road along Lake Victoria which is being upgraded to tarmac by a Chinese company.

The finished parts of the road look very nice. Its a very broad road, the quality of construction seems good from what I can tell. It's strange to drive on it, though, since the entire time we didn't see any other cars, only people on bikes and on foot.

One of the strange aspects of how the Chinese company works is that they fly in their own personnel. This may make sense for engineers, but even construction workers are Chinese. They were all wearing white-ish overalls, who knows why they would choose that color in a place where everything that was once white pretty quickly turns a curious shade of dusty red.

The only time I saw air conditioning in Tanzania so far (excluding a few places in Dar Es Salaam when we arrived there) was at the fenced-off compound where the Chinese workers and engineers live. Quite a gated community...

The tarmac road really is a big improvement over the pothole-ridden dirt track that was there before...

If you are interested in how China is doing business in Africa, I recommend taking a look at Howard French's website. He reports out of China for the New York Times but spent many years covering Africa before that. This puts him in an ideal position to report on China's involvement in Africa, and every once in a while he posts an interesting article on the subject.

This bridge at the border checkpoint is only a few years old. Before it was constructed, there was a small boat ferrying cars from one side of the river to the other.

Just about one kilometer downriver from the border crossing, on the Ugandan side of the river, a ruined structure stands in the floods. Yes, there was a reasonably big hydro power plant here, supplying electricity to the entire area. However, the Ugandan dictator Idi Amin apparently thought it a good idea to destroy the plant when he invaded Tanzania in 1978¹ (the plant was supplying electricity to Tanzania, too). Tanzania's president, Nyerere, counterattacked and Idi Amin's regime was overthrown in 1979, but plans to rebuild the power plant have remain shelved to date.

The power lines are gone completely, and goats now graze on the former site of the plant.

All that remains apart from the ruined structures in the river are some rusting turbine parts lying in the grass.

1. A TIME Magazine article from 1978 gives some details on the invasion

Several of these huge stoves are used to cook in the canteen.

The fuelwood is kept just outside the kitchen. Three 7-ton trucks full of firewood are consumed each week.

Further east, in Biharamulo, a more than 80 years old French priest has been setting up photovoltaic systems for almost 30 years. He has erected installations all across the region, even in neighboring countries. Because in the beginning, people kept stealing the panels, he is now mounting the panels like sails on big pipes. An additional benefit of this solution is that the angle of the panels can be adjusted several times daily to make the most out of the available sunlight.

The picture shows Katoke Seminary, a secondary school run by the Catholic church, powered by solar energy (no grid electricity):

• 40x50W panels
• 12x100W
• 24 batteries with 800Ah total capacity
• 2.2 kW inverter

Biharamulo District Hospital has an even bigger system:

• 120x100W panels
• 16x165W panels
• 3000Ah total battery capacity
• 3-phase inverter system, 3x3.5 kW

However, they are also hooked up the the local electric grid. Biharamulo has its own power plant, or rather power station.

It looks not very impressive from the outside.

On the inside, two 450kW generators provide electricity from diesel fuel. It's not the most efficient way to generate electricity but still better than the tiny generators a lot of people use where there is no grid. The power we use at CHEMA HQ comes from the Ugandan grid and is generated in coal power plants. It's quite reliable and blackouts usually last less than an hour.

Early morning near Katoke, Biharamulo.

Sun starting to set near Chato, a town very close to Lake Victoria.

Driving through Chato in the evening.

Out in the fields, dark clouds appear, heralding coming rains. The rainy season is starting, and the rice paddies seen to the left of this road will soon be flooded and ready for planting. Luckily, the areas we're in here were not affected by the severe flooding seen across much of East Africa these days.

Early morning near the CHEMA head office in Omurushaka.

The old sign is still here, a memory of an era where the roads were so bad and dangerous that if possibly in any way, people would travel by boat. These days the condition of roads is better, and while there are still many places where armed guards will drive along because of possible bandit attacks, the roads are often in a surprisingly good condition, and tarmac roads are being constructed at various places.

The pier is now used by local kids to hang out.

As we move on, the sun is about to set.

Only a few kilometers away, closer to town, people get all of their water from the lake. A lot of kids and teenagers are making money by using small carts to fetch water at the lake and haul it back to town for selling (a distance of several kilometers, depending on where the customer lives).

As always out in the countryside, as soon as you step out of the car, every kid in range of sight runs over to see what the foreigners are doing. These kids were staring at us for as long as we were there.

We took the plane through Dubai to Dar Es Salaam. After an overnight stay in a islamic hostel somewhere in a suburb, we took an early morning flight from Dar to Mwanza. In Mwanza we had to wait the entire day, as our ticket reservation had apparently not gone through. Finally, just before sunset, this plane took us from Mwanza to Bukoba across Lake Victoria. Becasue driving cross-country is too dangerous overnight, we had to stay another night in Bukoba. From Bukoba, it was a 2-hour drive in a jeep across unpaved roads to reach our current location: Bugene, Kagera Region, Tanzania.

Our house. Solar panels on the roof are not working, but we are hooked up to the electrical grid, which provides power most of the time (although the power comes from coal plants in Uganda). The house is located right next to CHEMA's office and was constructed almost 20 years ago for the German consultant who started the whole project. There was running water in the kitchen and bathrooms but it is not working anymore, so we have to fill water buckets from the two rainwater tanks. Still, it's a very nice and comfortable house.

The office. On the left side, the satellite dish is visible, which provides a 64kbit/s satellite uplink. Not exactly broadband...

Views from the house in the morning...

View across the hills from a path just below our house. We're at about 1600 meters above sea level here, and the terrain is quite hilly. It can also get quite cool and windy during the night.

On the road...

A choir contest organized by local churches. Religion is very important here. Also, most development work is done through church-based organizations. Even the local hospital was built by a church (but is now at least partly government-run). Practically speaking, even though most people are either Christian or Muslim, there is still a lot left from the previous religions, belief in ghosts, rainmaking, etc.

So far, I have been working mostly at the HQ on various tasks, including propping up the IT system which is plagued by the slow internet connection, a multitude of viruses, and a general lack of a proper setup. Soon we will start to go out into the field to look at what's actually being done right now. The idea is to get carbon trading going in one way or another to support the various fledgling development efforts.