Tuesday, November 22, 2011

Village life

Hello!

Now we have visited two villages, Bambi and Tunduni, for evaluation. We have also met the village heads, shehas and intervued them. The life in the villages is fascinating, and it keeps amazing me how patient people are here. Even though the intervues take a long time, now one complains or goes home. Something I and maybe most Finnish people should learn from them. People are in general very pleased with the LIVE-project and sad that it's coming to its end. They also wonder why and I have explained to them that in Finland the development projects usually last for three years.

In the villages I've seen some genious solutions for example for the lightning during the evening (the darkness falls at around six pm). Many people are also engaged in several different livelihoods, and today I saw some beautiful colouring of clothes in the soap making group in Tunduni. Village people have many problems concerning their livelihoods, for example thieves and cows and goats grazing freely and destroying their harvests. Also disease and pests are common in agriculture. The weather conditions may also harm the livelihoods.

It has been sunnier here now and also quite hot, at least in my standards. On the weekend I stepped on a sea urcher while swimming and had to pull the sticks out of my foot all night...

Tutaonana!

Elina

Monday, November 14, 2011

Greetings from the rainy Zanzibar

Mambo!

I (Elina) arrived in Zanzibar on Friday and I've been trying to get used to the living in here. People are still very friendly and everything is pretty much the same as last year, when I visited Sansibar, but there is still some adaptation I need to do. We (me, Markus and the DCCFF project staff) visited the caves on Sunday 13th with more than 20 tourists from Keski-Suomi. The visit was successful despite the heavy raining we had. The caves are always fascinating to visit. It's been raining a lot in here, yet it's very hot.

We planned the evaluation of the LIVE project I aim to do, and tomorrow I will start going to the village visits together with Tahir and Othman. We will start from Kiwengwa. I will write more as we have visited some of the villages and the livelihood groups.

Tutaonana!

Elina