Tanzania and the Art of Motorcycle Riding

4/11/2017 or 11/4/17:  Tanzania and the Art of Motorcycle Riding

    I made a huge discovery yesterday. The foot brake! It’s amazing! There’s this little medal pedal under my right foot…. It’s a brake! I’ve sorta known it was there but just reflexively used the hand brake on the right handlebar to slow or stop, It’s probably muscle memory from bicycle riding. The problem is that I use my right hand for the throttle too. And since my Sanlg 125 cc Chinese bike will always stall out when stopping unless I keep the throttle up, I respond by trying to gas it and brake it with the same hand at the same time. Not easy to do, especially in traffic, on a hill, in the heat, with crowd on the street (and Mzungu always catch street eyes). So, my discovery and my clutsy attempts to stop and still keep the RPMs up all reflect on one of the many reasons I am without doubt the worst motorcycle driver here in Biharamulo.

     The reasons are endless. First, I am a  new rider. Second, I am old and thats not changing. Third, I AM NOT A BIKER!    Mentally, physically or emotionally. Look at me!  Six feet (almost) tall and 150 pounds and a full set of teeth. And those forearms? Tattoo less and sinewy. They will never pose a threat or inflict fear to  anyone in any bar, country or continent on this planet.  The words threatening, intimidating, imposing will never be used to describe me. My skin, teeth and face all lack the weather beaten, grizzled portrait of a road warrior. And lets just face it I am without question the oldest motorcyclist here.

    I do have some excuses for my bad road behavior. First of all this is Tanzania and that does come with some built in problems. First of all, the Brits were here. That means driving is like working inside of a mirror. Every thing is backwards. Drive on the left. A right hand turn in traffic is the most dangerous thing I know.  A left hand turn, no problem. And I don’t know but people passing me on the right is always going to be foreign to me. 

    Then believe it or not. There is some moments of heavy traffic here. When I first came here most people walked or had a Chinese knock off English bicycles. There were white Toyota Land Cruisers owned by NGO's and some locally owned cars. Now its boom time for motorcycles, thousands of them, all Chinese and there are more cars ( Toyotas), less bicycles and no one walks ( thats an exaggeration). 

   And then there are the roads.  Despite the booming economy and and as more “tarmac “covers the roads in Eastern Tanzania everyday Biharamulo roads remain untouched and pockmarked like  the magnified zit covered face of hormone raging teen ager.  These are not just ruts, they are craters! You could get lost in some of them and not come out. There are so bad they have been know to cause hematuria (personal communication). And before I leave the road issue I have to say there is not one street sign or named street here. So yes, I may be the worst /oldest rider here but I never signed up to do the Baja. And while I will get better I will always be the oldest rider here and plan to always drive like one …..driving around at no more then 25MPH with my blinker on. 

    

MAKING IT BETTER OR.....LIKE BEER, POWER CAN BE LOCAL

 11/1/2017 : THIS IS MY FIRST OF A FEW POSTS FROM BIHARAMULO 2017. MORE TO COME I HOPE.

           BRINGING CLEAN POWER TO WHERE IT IS NEEDED

This is my 9^th trip here and sometimes I think I’ve seen “most” everything (even though I haven’t) And even though it is sometimes overwhelming  I still think I can change things. Change things for the better and in an African way. What exactly the “African way “is….well more on that later.

   I am travelling with my girlfriend Jennifer Cohen, it’s her first trip here and she’s diving right in. Shocked by the poverty but mindful of the excess we are coming from in America she is doing better then I did on my first trip here. I’m also travelling with 2 solar power electrical engineers. The plan for the first week is to appraise the current 1960 electrical wiring of the hospital and get a feasible, realistic estimate to put a solar power system up to run the hospital.  The Sandy Christman Foundation (SCF) will finance all this.

   Medicine in the developing world and especially western Tanzania is at the same level as the electrical wiring system in the hospital…..circa 1960. Here we have wards with 8 people to a room lite by one light bulb in the ceiling and maybe one workable electrical outlet for “appliances”…medical appliances.  We have daily power outages that are so routine that it doesn’t stop a conversation or even a dance. When the power goes out you just seamlessly pull out your phone, turn it on and continue. No worse then a hiccup. However the delivery of medicine today is intolerant to interruption, even a hiccup. Loss of power in the middle of an operation? That could mean disaster. Yes, we need more nurses and doctors. Yes, we need stronger and less expensive medications. Yes, we need better prevention and vaccination. But there will always be sick people who need at least early 21^st century health care. And that kind of health care runs on an infrastructure that supplies electricity.  That means not only electrical production but also distribution to the point of care or use.

clear skies, no power lines

Since we are 2 degrees south of the equator at 4,000 ft. elevation with 300+ sunny days a year…..solar power is a logical choice. Cheap to produce and locally made so there is no need for huge towers with transmission lines, maybe not even a telephone pole. Best of all solar is clean, no diesel powered generators, no coal powered powered plants. Sounds great? sounds logical?  Yes, of course….. Congratulations! We have now finished the easy part.

    The hard part is getting it done.  Despite this being a developing country that fills all the requirements of poverty, poor education and health care this place is made for solar power. Here, there may be a future with cell phone towers. But with locally produced and locally used cheap renewable power that is clean and reliable there MIGHT  no telephone poles, no giant power lines, less air pollution, less oil spills, gas leaks and mining. All unwanted things from the developed world......which by the way is planet Earth.

    Getting it done….this week the engineers, who travelled 14 hrs. on a bus from Arusha to get to Mwanza before they travelled 7 hrs. with us to get to Biharamulo, turn out to be good people. They will give us an estimate of the needs of the hospital and how many solar panels are needed. They will review the existing ancient wiring of the hospital, currently held together with paper clips and electrical tape. Then they will give us an estimate of costs. The engineers are Gijs  (pronounced Ghajsh), a Dutch expat who lives in Arusha and once bicycled from Norway to South Africa. With him is Abdullah Ahmed, a Tanzanian electrical engineer who speaks English but prefers Swahili.  At the end of the first day we met with the Bishop of Kagera and Gresmus  (the CMO of the hospital). This will be a real business deal and I for one am not experienced at business transactions and I have never read “The Art of the Deal”, and never will.  But I am feeling cautiously optimistic about this. Realizing that any deal in Africa is loaded with bear traps, sand traps with disappearing money. My job is to get the best deal, protect Sandy Christman Foundation, get renewable clean energy for the hospital and as always….”make things better”.