Humble Beginnings in Mbeya, Tanzania by Tyler Jackson

I travelled from Arusha to Mbeya, Tanzania by bus. The trip took about 18
hours, but it felt like an eternity. Upon arrival, Alfred, my contact for
Imara Tech, met me at the bus station. We spent the night in Mbeya at a
small hotel where I fed on chicken soup and bathed with hot water out of a
bucket. Bucket showers have been the norm here. The next day, Alfred and I
took another bus to Vwawa, a smaller town about 30km from the Zambian
border. 




This part of the country doesn't see many mzungu—white people—so I
felt a little bit like the odd man out. People stared and whispered
"mzungu" as I passed by. Alfred and I spent the next 10 days talking to
farmers in and around Vwawa. We travelled by motorcycle to far-reaching
villages whose lifeblood flows through the surrounding fields of coffee,
maize, peanuts, and bananas. I'm investigating the impacts of a small
threshing machine that the farmers have been using. Normally, taking the
kernels off the cobs of maize takes many days of long, menial, hard labor.
With this machine, those hours turn to minutes. 



After talking to five or
six farmers in a day, Alfred and I head back to Vwawa, where his sister and
mother have prepared dinner—usually beans and rice—and we enjoy it as a
family. They like to poke fun at my poor Swahili and my love for spicy
peppers—pilipili. In the photos you can see Alfred and I working hard. He
acts as my translator for these encounters. We have become fast friends and
love to joke around with each other. I keep telling him he needs to visit
me in the states, and I already miss him, even though I only left him in
Mbeya last week.