Pledge my TRI!

Dear family, friends and other random visitors to the blog,

I need your help. A few weeks ago I decided to register for an olypmic distance triathlon with the hopes of being able to use this to raise money for great project that empowers the mamas in Matipwili village to earn a living through sustainable agriculture. Matipwili village borders on Saadani National Park along the coast of Tanzania (bush meets ocean!).

The project aims at increasing the production of vegetables through sustainable and organic farming techinques. By increasing production, the mamas will be in a position to sell their produce to nearby lodges and other villages. Gaining access to these markets is an important economic step, giving the women a opportunity to earn an income and benefiting from the tourism sector in their backyards.

With a successful pilot phase, led by Thomas Wouters, and agromist from Belgium, SANA is now hoping to scale up the project but needs funds to be able to do that. And that's where you can help. By visiting our fundraising page and then clicking on the donate widget, you can pledge my first ever triathlon attempt (remember jump rope for heart, etc, it's like that) and help me support Saving Africa's Nature. It's set-up through paypal so it's a safe way to send money and you can either send money though a paypal account of by debit/credit cards. Anyone who donates $25 or more will get a postcard from the event in August.

I've got plans to go up an visit the community soon and will share photos. In the meantime, you can watch this video put together by my friend Tende. He runs an adventure company, is a volutary board member for SANA. SANA is doing lots of great things with the communities around Saadani to make sure they are benefiting from the tourism sector which runs in their backyards. The video is mostly about Miseni Eco Retreat, but you get to meet some of the mamas involved in the pilot phase of the Bio Agriculture project an introduction to what they're doing.

This is...

Ugh. Again, super slacking in the blog department. And that awesome audio piece I promised you from my trip back to Dire Dawa is still in the works. I'm trying to get my butt in gear.

Earlier in May I spent 8 days in Kenya at a work thing in Naivasha, which is in the rift valley floor. It was mostly work, no play but on the Friday we did get to go for a boat safari on the lake. Below are a few snapshots.

Ever wondered what the drive into Nairobi city centre looks like? Well lucky for you, I filmed the last 10 minutes or so on my phone and compressed it into this little video of our drive into Nairobi city center on Saturday at noon. Apologies for the cheesy music, but I did warp it a little bit to increase the funness. This is Africa. I should say there was suspiciously little traffic chaos on this particular day. 

Foundations - happy dog stuff

So after a short break here at the DSMC, we're back with a dog training update. I had my super awesome friends Steph and Erik visiting me for just shy of two weeks. Amazing that they came all the way from Canada to hang out. I dare say they got the full TZ experience, complete with lost luggage on the way here, tea plantation delights in the Usambaras, an ENTIRE day at the airport because their flight had technical problem (they found this out AFTER they were airborne and the flight had to turn around) on the way to Arusha, a safari delight in the Ngorongoro Cratee which came with the unfortunate bonus of some sort of food poisoning and/or parasite, and then a relaxing weekend (well more like a day) overlooking the ocean from Zanzibar.

 Now, alas, they're gone and I'm back to the grind. I've been sick too, some sort of flu is the best guess I got from the clinic after being out of commission for the better part of this week with intermittent fever and muscle/joint aches.

After my lovely visitors left I got back on the dog training bandwagon and the girls are loving it. This new, everything-is-a-game thing is a hit and we're in our 8th week of lessons. It should like a lot and it us, but we've only had 4 topics to far. The two weeks practice time is great to work on our skills (both dog and human) but it still feels like we've blown through it (the 1.5 week haitus on the lesson I need the most practice on is probably partly to blame here).

 Anyway, we started on heelwork this Monday and the doggles were lucky to get a day or two in before I confined myself to the bed. We were back at it last night, poor girls haven't been a walk in weeks and have loads of energy - unlike me, and Natasha is doing swimmingly. Shaki's uptake on the lessons is completely different. We still haven't mastered the tug together yet but she's much more into the shaping that Natasha. On heelwork Shaki's super excited and Natasha is at a good level. And their self-control is great - in sessions - but outside of that, like when the door to the cat's dinner room is open by mistake, the self-control is not tops.

So fun dog stuff starts with Shaki and her super enthusiasm for shaping work. She's just so much fun that we're shaping these silly behaviours. This is joy!

And two clips of Natasha.

This is from our second day at trying to shape her walking backward. The first day was a bust (I kept rewarding too late and getting sits and lying down. This is where the class helped enormously so after feedback from Thomas and Fanny, I took a new approach on day two and we got some where! This is the fourth of 4 sessions on shaping backing up that day. I this I saw a lightbulb flash toward the end.

Then we have last nights sessions of heelwork. Interesting technique to shape a perfect (or as close to it as possible) is to start by walking backward and the dog follows. Eventually I'll add a slight right step and walk forward and she should spin her butt and be in a perfect heel.... of course this is easier said than done and we have a few steps between this and that, but we're having fun.

Okay, enough dog-blog for today!

Jane Goodall - If you had the chance to do anything differently

I'm just back from a short hop to Nairobi this week. We had an event for work on Friday which I was asked to attend so I combined it with a few days based in our Nairobi office.

Didn't have much chance to enjoy the city, but I did have dinner with some friends I met here in Dar es Salaam who have since been moved to Nairobi. Amazing to share time with friends even after they've left. It's the one major occupational hazard (or personal?) that comes with choosing to work internationally, your friends are constantly on the move, just like yourself. Someone is either coming or going, and it's never certain when or whether you'll see them again.

My second night I had the chance to get together with a former roommate from Copenhagen.d.

Add that to the friends I met in the airport both on the way out of Dar es Salaam on Wednesday, and at the airport in Nairobi yesterday, and I've had a nice half week full of meetings with friends who've come and gone (or friends who've stayed in the same place, and I've come and gone.

Anyway, as a hazard of this kind of lifestyle, I was thinking, if I could do things differently than I am now, would I? I don't think so!

Here's a clip from the lecture by Jane Goodall on the topic.

Foundations - after 3 weeks

That's right, time for another dog training update. I'm still working on that audio extravaganza from my trip to Ethiopia now two weekends ago. My audio editing powers were severely hampered this weekend with 7+ power cuts during the day on both Saturday day and Sunday day.

I also have a Jane Goodall treat for you coming up in the near future, just need to get an internet connection that doesn't block Soundcloud.

In the meantime, Shaki was super excited to play self control games yesterday and finished off with a great "dead dog".

Natasha closes this session off with a stellar hand touch that require her to jump to hit the target. We also learned that while dogs will do almost anything for a piece of cheese, using small cubes of cheese in this heat leads to sticky-cheese residue-y hands. 

I'm sure if Shaki and Natasha could sing the I love Cheese song, they would.

A glimpse into our improvement in tugging. You see that some socks have been reincarnated as dog tugs. My dogs love socks, so I thought this was the perfect thing to create a motivating toy out of.

Foundations - week 2 self-control

For those of you who were hoping that this wasn't going to become a blog about me training my dogs, you'll have to put up with me for a few more weeks.

But to keep you interested, you should know that I was in Ethiopia last weekend, revisiting "home" in Dire Dawa with my awesome ex-housemate and friend Kaja. We cooked up a scheme when she was on her R&R in Tanzania about two months ago, to go back to Dire Dawa for the weekend and re-live our old weekends. It's been 1.5 years since I left Dire Dawa and longer for her. We wanted to see what's changed and what's stayed the same.

These boys offered to pose for a photo while I was taking a picture of the sieves behind them.

I documented (or tried to) a good deal of our weekend with my handy Zoom. Now I'm sorting through the tape and putting together a pak on our trip so stay tuned for some audio gems from our weekend to DD.

But back in Dar, the second session of our dog training course had begun and we have a new theme - self-control. This is one of the areas where we will definitely benefit. Hopefully taking the baby steps of "leaving" the treats until they've been offered will also translate into less cat chasing (poor Cicero does get a a few good runs in every day) and not "mugging" the cat food bowl (which is basically like hitting the jackpot since cat food is one of the primary food rewards I use with them.

Foundations - after week 1

So, we're one week into our Foundations class with Fanny Gott. We've been playing in short session every day - short sessions in the morning and also after work.

In case you want to see how it's going.... here it is.

If you're really bored, there are plenty more on youtube.

From the dashboard of MM - How's your morning commute

I snapped a quick video this morning of my drive to work. We had a huge thunderstorm this morning which started around 4 am.

I woke up to a text message from my neighbour suggesting we message our gardener and tell him to stay home today, as getting across town in the rain is a nightmare. Also the the prospect of rain most of the day, there wouldn't be a lot he could do.

I pulled back the curtains in my bedroom to find that some good sized branches from the neem trees in my backyard had been knocked down. Thankful it wasn't another tree falling like last year, but I was a bit concerned about how they fell. They landed just next to the house and right beside the pots which I sowed my herb seeds in yesterday.

With this kind of rain, we all anticipate the worst on the roads. The already sketchy adherence to traffic rules goes completely out the window as it becomes each driver for herself.

Without further ado, this morning's traffic clusterfuck for your viewing pleasure. My apologies to those sensitive to the title, but there really is no other word to describe it.



And for another little snapshot of morning-rain induced traffic delights, this quick video is of a rapidly growing puddle on the main artery coming in to the city centre from the north. I'd never seen it accumulate to both lanes of traffic.

Foundations

I've had this silly idea for ages now to get my girls into some agility training. It looks like loads of fun and I think the dogs would love it too. But I didn't know where to start. I actually bought a mini agility start-up set between Ethiopian and Tanzania that's just sitting in the corner of the study still in the box.

In late January I stumbled across the work of a dog trainer named Susan Garrett who does phenomenal things with dogs. She's a world champion in agility (Her. Her dogs. Who do you attribute that to?).  She has the kind of dogs that make others envious and a little ashamed of our own pets' training. I got completely addicted to her blog and her youtube channel and was trying to figure out, how do I get me some of that dog training? Wouldn't you know it, she offers online training courses, but with no imminent start date for the next course, I was still searching.

That's when I found Fanny Gott, a "a professional dog trainer with a passion for clicker training and dog sports" based in Sweden. And wouldn't you know it, she was offering her "Foundations" class starting in March and enrolment was opening in a few days. And so I kept checking back and as soon as enrolment opening, I registered Natasha and me. I've been looking forward to the course starting and finally it did.

Our first lesson is called "Play with your dog". We get a lesson posted every two weeks, some focus areas and a homework assignment that involves working with your dog and filming the sessions. We then upload the clips and Fanny makes comments, gives tips, and guidance. Dog-training on the internet! Who knew!

While Natasha is my course participant, I'm also working with Shaki on the same things. You know I love my dogs and I'm going to share some of that love with you. Hopefully you'll see us progressing! I have to say, I feel a little bit silly propping my computer up on the bbq in the back yard and hitting record to film myself for an online dog training class. I figure this is just one step further in the re-spatialization of social space.

RAIN

Despite the promise of the thunderstorm and the flashing of lightning across the sky last night after dark, it didn't rain. Hopefully it will today!

****

Rainy season has arrived. Early. Hopefully this means that when my super awesome friends come to visit in April, we'll be through with most of this rainy business. 

Bring on the rains this evening!

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75%+ chance of thunderstorms

Follow your heart - really

I just realized I uploaded one of the other clips with Jane Goodall.

Here is the "real" Follow your heart clip. Hope I didn't spoil it too much with the transcript earlier.

My question is, what advice would you give young adults who are just starting [their careers]?

So my advice to all young people setting out is: What is your passion? Follow your heart. Where’s your passion, and where you passion lies, that’s where you’ll make the most difference.

I’ll tell you a story. I have a great friend, a Dutchman, and he’s always been very good at making money. When he got to be about 45, he had, like so many people kind of a midlife crisis, thinking I have to give all my money away. But he didn’t. He gave some of it away.

But as usually happens in that way, you give some of it away to a foundation or a charity and you keep enough to lead a good life.

So he said to me one day, I’ve got two options, I can either do, I’m good at making money and I can go on making money. But so often I think I would rather just be. I wouldn’t be making money, I’d just be.

And I said, well you know Fred, you do care about the environment and if everybody who cares about the environment who makes money, decides not to make money and just be, then how do we operate, because we need people who can continue to make money.

So the money, the money is not necessarily a bad thing. I mean today, the world would be a very, very crummy play to live.

The private sector more, and more, and more are dealing with environmental and humanitarian issues and governments are passing over more and more opportunities come out to the private sector and to NGOs.

You know, maybe you’re really good at making money and you really love to do it there’s nothing wrong. It depends how you use that money. If you hoard it – and you know you want six cars and two houses and a couple of yachts, all that kind of thing – the I would say that is not a good way to work. But if you say, well I’m really good at making money, how wonderful. I can help this and that and the other, that’s great.

So follow your heart, and where you passion lies, that’s where you’ll make the most difference.

Don't you ever get scared?

On Monday evening, I joined hundreds of other Dar residents for a screening of the new documentary about Jane Goodall's work and life, called Jane's Journey.


You might say Goodall is best known for her work tracking and researching chimpanzee's in Gombe National Reserve in Southern Tanzania. After years of living amongst the chimpanzee's a conference she attended changed her course of life. She moved from being a researcher to an activist, lobbying not only to protect and save the chimpanzee but also other nature, environmental and social causes.

I'd definitely recommend watching the documentary. It was among the 130+ feature documentaries which were entered in this year's Academy Awards and made it to top 15.

I recorded a bit of the question and answer session that took place with Goodall after the screening. It's recorded on my mobile phone, so the quality is not outstanding, but I'm excited to share some of my favourite clips with you.

From the dashboard of MM

Argh. Despite my best intentions and starting the year off with a roll, I've been lagging behind in my posts.
So today I bring you a random assortment of photos taken from the dashboard of MM. When I take the pictures, I always have good intentions on blogging them immediately. Alas, here we are.

I don't even know what to say about this one!

Hear, hear! Keep Dar Beautiful!

Happy hounds after a beautiful trip to the beach!

I'd never noticed that orange and green paint job on the building beside the (I think) Hindu temple

Sweeeeeedish

Glad I'm not crammed on to that dala dala

This pink and green lorry full of people was just too awesome NOT to snap a picture of!

Happy Birthday Cicero

Remember this little guy? Cicero joined the family at 8 weeks old in April 2011. But his birthday is February 9, so yesterday we celebrated the kitty's birthday with extra peace from the dogs and super cuddles.

Here he is on his first birthday weighing in at 5.25 kgs. He's grown into a fierce hunter (lizards and mice beware) and is slowly learning not to love-bite toes when he wants a cuddle.

From the dashboard of MM - The Home Stretch

Here it is! After a few days of playing with the optimal positioning of my camera phone on the dashboard of MM, I managed to record my drive home from work. Perhaps this seems like a silly thing to record, but I though for those of you who may never make it to Tanzania to visit, I could share with you a slice of my every day life.

And for those of you who have been here and maybe even riden in the MM from Kazi House to the peninsula, I thought it might be a nice reminder of good times in MM.

I hope you enjoy watching it. I enjoyed dusting off the old Adobe Premier to cut this together.

Special surprise project to be unveiled SOON

Dear lovely blog readers, I've been in the midst of a little project which I hope you'll enjoy. Just to whet your appetite, I'll tell you it's a little clip from my daily life here in Dar es Salaam.

It's almost done, but not quite. I just have a bit of collecting material left to do (hopefully on the way home from work today) and then I should be ready to unveil tomorrow.

Stay tuned for exciting visuals from DSM tomorrow!

3 peas in a pod

A proper post to come, in the meantime to tide you over, I present to you 3 peas in a pod.

Kiswahili wiki moja

I've finished my first week of Swahili lessons this week - 28 hours of learning. My head is still spinning a little with all the new words. Yesterday afternoon I sat down and made flash cards for all the vocab we've had this week. Some of it I knew from my feeble attempt to learn Swahili last year. 

Day one and two were a breeze. Lots of energy and ready to learn. It feels like the vocab we were introduced to on days three and four isn't quite sinking in as fast. Hopefully a few hours of quizzing myself this weekend will mean I'm ready to go on Monday for week two. We end each week with a field trip. Yesterday we went to one of the markets in Dar es Salaam which is known for its clothing. Loads and loads of second-hand clothes from Europe and North America ends in markets this these. I wasn't so interested in the clothes but quickly found myself in the fabric section where vendors are selling both finished clothes and fabric. I couldn't help myself at one of the stalls selling bolts of batik, and ended up bringing home 3 meters of a nice blue and brown batik. I'm thinking some pillow cases for the blue guest room and maybe a new cover for the cushions on my veranda furniture. I also also saw some nice vitenge material (although the one I liked most was imported from Nigeria and only sold in 3 x 4 meters which is a little excessive as I'm not quite sure what to do with all that fabric) so I didn't get it.

 

I did pick up a  little present for my pops who decided that funding my Kiswahili lessons was a great Christmas present. Thanks Dad! Let's see when I make it to the post office. (Ruining the surprise a bit with this photo - but it's always nice to have something to look forward to.)

And in my week of Swahili immersion, I also decided that I would buy this painting done by a talented Tanzanian guy who goes by the name Minzi. He's had a bunch of paintings on display at my favourite coffee spot here in Dar and they've been disappearing so I figured how was the right time. I love the way he combines bits of fabric which are symbolic of Tanzanian culture in the paintings. Now I just need to get my hammer out and get some nails in the wall so it can hang straight!

We made it - Part 2

One day this year, I'm going to bake this cake on my super Italian kitchen calendar! I just looks sooooo delicious!

I meant to post this sequence New Year's Day along with a video of the fireworks being shot off to a horrible version of Auld Lang Syne being played on repeat, but alas I was too lethargic on January 1 and I deleted the video. Instead, this poor quality fireworks photos taken on my phone will have to do as evidence of the new year arriving in Tanzania.

In other video news, here's a clip of Natasha and Cicero playing while I was trying to nap. All a little naughty as Natasha jumped up on the bed which is usually not allowed. But in a slightly hungover state I thought I'd make an exception. It didn't last long as Cicero got right up there and the two didn't let me get any sleep. Perhaps this is only interesting viewing for me. But it's only 2.51 minutes of your life you'll waste if you watch the whole thing. Cicero holds his own (weighing in at good 5.25 kg - we were at the vet yesterday for de-worming and a check up since he's almost 1 year old!) against Natasha (weighing in at 22 kg).

we made it!

We made it to another year. I celebrated with friends. I hope you did too.

Now, it's back to the grind. Tomorrow is Monday January 2nd - better known as any regular Monday, albiet this time with the added drawback of having to back to work after a great week of holidays. So 10 pm and I'm in bed with the alarm set for 6. It's a cruel world. The one big change tomoorow is that I'm attending my first day of an intensive 4-week Swahili class. Hopefully it'll pave the road in my mind with the scraps of Swahili that I've picked up so far and turn it into a something driveable (to stay with the metaphor).

I hope 2012 brings the best to all of you! May I blog more regularly this year!