Author Archives: Lesley Marincola

For about three weeks, Amanda and Lesley have been on a Disney craze.  The cartoony goodness started on safari, with “The Circle of Life” and “Hakuna Matata,” both of which are quite fitting for Tanzania.  People here use “hamna shida” more than “hakuna matata,” but the idea is the same, “relax, nothing’s worth too much [...]

Well, here I am, back in sunny California, missing Tanzania and my other groupmates (see Separation Anxiety post !), but also loving being home. Sometimes it takes being away from the comforts you have every day for an extended period of time to realize how much you value and appreciate them. From my electric toothbrush [...]

The people here are extremely open and friendly, except when it comes to pictures.  Here, they are a mixed bag, with some people open to them and some not.  As a general rule, kids love to have their picture taken, and will get quite a kick out of seeing themselves rendered on the little LCD [...]

There comes a time in every engineer’s life when he or she needs a resistor.  Usually, you go to Jameco, or online, and purchase one (or many) for 1 cent apiece, and life goes on.  But here in Karatu, life isn’t quite that simple for an ambitious electrician. Once upon a time, there were two [...]

After spending the last 4 almost 5 weeks together, the team’s adventures are winding down as 2 of the 4 have left for the states. And yes, after spending every waking minute with the same 4 people, it is a little wierd when two of them aren’t there when you wake up or when you [...]

  Here we are, in beautiful Zanzibar! We head back to the mainland, to Dar es Salaam, today, but wanted to share several of our stories with you from the past four days. And of course, a photo is worth 1000 words.   First, I have to start with the beaches. They are gorgeous, with [...]

Dear readers, We made it to Dar Es Salaam and Zanzibar… After a 12 hour bus ride through the Tanzanian countryside… that left us begging the question, “hmm, did that actually just happen to us?” It started at 4:30am when we got up to finish packing, hard boil a bunch of eggs (our staple food [...]

Remember Simon? The shop owner in Maghesho who powers a TV with his generator and charges the village’s cell phones? We introduced you to him a week or so ago. Because Simon is the village electricity source, so to speak, we left our trough concentrator prototype with him for a week, while we were on [...]

Rhinos are difficult to find.  You would think that such a large, aggressive animal would be easy to spot, but they have a startling resemblance to stumps, tree trunks, rocks, and anthills.   Well, we think they do, because that’s all we found.  There we were, in Ngorongoro Crater, looking for a rhino in the forest, [...]

Meet Naomi. That’s her below. We met her in Ilkadinga a couple of days ago when we were testing our prototypes. She’s a cool kid and we thought you might be interested to hear what an 11-year-old Tanzanian girl has to say about school, friends, play, and her future. Naomi lives with her grandmother and [...]