Hi Billy,
I hope you feel better soon. I would love to hear about your trip.
Just finished the best book on development that I have seen. The Critical Villager by Eric Dudley. Maybe old stuff for you (written in 1993), but new and refreshing for me.
It seems I have heard of that book, but never read it. I’ll check it out. Feeling a little better, but on the computer this morning at 2:30 cause of time zone confusion. We’ve been operating 7 hours ahead of now. So we fight to stay awake until it’s very late, like at 5 pm…haha…then wake early in the morning.
We had the hardest trip I’ve ever made. 6 days of hard travel to get in, six to get out. 35 hour plane rides, 18 hour bus rides, 19 hours in a really old junky truck on non-existant roads, motorcycles, 4x4’s, walking. Entire towns with no food for sale. I’ve been to a lot of rough places, but this was by far the most remote. But I did take my wife along this time. Good times…
Zambia and DR Congo are the most disfunctional places I’ve ever been. But what we found in the center of it was absolutly amazing. The most well managed, put together, hard core indigenous community development group I have ever heard of. Absolutely unbelievable. If you can find a picture on Google maps or Google Earth you might find a satellite pic of a place called “Fube, D.R.Congo” . This group built that city over the past 9 years after leaving the refugee camps in Zambia…There are 175 members. Average wage per person is under $.10USD/day. Everything they have they dig out of the ground or from the trees. The vice president of the group is the primary school principal in a govt job. She has not recieved her first paycheck in 7 years. I asked her why. She said, “things are slow here. Money is good, but we live on hope and faith.”
They make their own fired brick. We are helping them to come up with fired clay roof tiles. NOTE: if anyone is an expert on the subject I would be open to some help here.
I think the most surprising thing I ever saw was that Their town and camps are clean. Yes, that’s right. In the heart of third world Africa, there is no trash on the streets. There are no food scraps laying around. There are very few flies. They have covered garbage pits like septic tanks to put it in. There are no goats or dogs in town. There is no open defication. Everything is orderly and clean (relative to surrounding areas). I mean it’s still the end of the African dry season.
We taught some classes on some simple techs that we could do in a short time. 16 brick Rocket stoves were a huge hit because they could make almost all the material from the earth.
TipTaps were very popular, but many were concerned that they could not afford, or find an empty 2 liter bottle.
The teaching that eating raw honey is very healthy was quite welcome as some well intended, yet apparently very wrong European backpacker told them that eating sweet things was bad for their health.
Very high rate of vits A and C defficiency, but otherwise surprisingly healthy. Few parasites. Pretty good water handling practices. We helped them cover and protect their spring source while we were there.
Erika taught some solar cooking classes which was very exciting to the women.
We taught pasteurization of water, SODIS, general sanitation, ORT therapy, made a few suggestions about their gardening practices to stop the powdery mildew problem, and other similar stuff.
Mostly we went to meet the people, check things out, and investigate what resources are available. They have control of virgin timberland about the size of 2 Alabama counties. Until the Congolese civil war the area was full of lions and elephants. Most of them got eaten, the rest escaped to Tanzania. So they have a lot of natural resources, including iron ore, sulfur, timber, good soil, and great clean water in abundance. Close to Lake Tanzanique. But they lack any kind of industry to convert anything into a marketable product. They are doing amazing work protecting the trees from the loggers of China. Chinese companies are clear cutting Zambia and Congo. They make a deal with the high up gov’t officials who pay a very small sum to the local chief and then they give a big John Deere tractor to the local community to skid out the logs. The locals are allowed to use the tractor to plow in exchange. The people are not aware of the value of the logs. Some of them worth tens of thousands of dollars. And they are happy to not have to plow with a hoe. But when it’s done, the tractor moves on to the next place with trees and the people are left in an over grown clear cut. The weeds take over, which makes it even harder to farm. The local chief in this area put all his land under this group I am working with so it would have some legal protection against such practices. So they are doing real well with that.
We want to do more training in the area of health & agriculture, water moving and purufication, cooking tech, etc…
But first they need an income. I’ve never been to a development target arena where the very first thing a needs assessment calls for is money. But this group has gotten themselves to that point all by themselves. They are completely ready for micro enterprise training. Most of the time it takes years to get a group to that point. But they’ve been at this for 17 years on their own. Which is really exciting to me. I am not interested in being anyone’s saviour or God. And there is always that to have to overcome when you work with a people that puts you too high on a pedastol. But these folks own their own work, and we are seen by them as “helpful friends” not as “invading powerful kings”. Not a single person there asked me for a single thing other than information.
So, if I can get healthy, we want to make a plan to develop specific micro enterprise techs for them specifically. So they can generate an economy in the area. 10 years ago the area was just woods. Now the town has 15,000 people and no developed markets, etc. The group has built about 127 miles of roads to connect themselves with other villages, most of which are in other countries. Tanzania and Zambia. So trade across the borders is hindered because you have to pay off the people on both sides of the border. It cost us $20 to bribe our way into Congo and $20 to get out. even with totally legal, and expensive national visas. Not much to rich Americans, but a big deal if your profit margins are in the cents not dollars range…
They have:
They need:
We are excited to get started…we will keep praying about it. Hopefull we can find a way to make the money we need to do some work there. Current thinking is that we might be able to take the whole family for several months next dry season, so Jakob can help with gasification, Luke can teach bee keeping, and Jesse can help with his water pumps. And Naomi will undoubtedly become our official translator. She is very fast with languages.
We’ll see what happens.
So that’s a glimpse of what we’ve been into. To tell the truth, we really haven’t even had time to process anything. Yhis is the first time I’ve written any of this down, so we will take some time to pray abut it and see what happens from there.
How was your trip to Rwanda? I haven’t looked for any posts about it yet. Haven’t had time to catch up on everything.
Also, Jim Hart. If you are reading this, I would be interested in talking to you about your little gasifier that runs the generator that you always bring to Argos. I think it would be an option for our work there. Especially the no-weld version.
I am uploading a picture of a homemade welder I saw in Zambia. This poor guy is welding with a pair of pink sunglasses.
They are turning all their trees into charcoal for pennies. Some of it is very hard char. sounds like glass when you tap it.
A single use brick kiln.
China is hugely investing in Zambia. These blue buildings are gifts from the Chinese that have hammer mills and charging stations for the communities in exchange for their vote for the current Zambian govt that is overwhelmingly pro-China.
I asked why some communities don’t have one. The answer was simply, “They voted for the other guy.”
An average Zambian road. But one with electric lines. Somewhat uncommon.
Standard, Zambian house.
Homemade welder
The result of 50 years of bad development work.
This says it pretty well.
Here we are at the Zambia/Congo border. The magazine is a local one we have here in our county. We can get some free advertisment for taking it far away and sending in the picture.
The Congolese immigration office. (Actually built by the organization we are working with as a favor to the man who squeezed us for $40.00) LOL.
This man hauled this table from town for us on his bicycle. About 13 miles.We did not ask for it…
A very make-shift rocket stove I built for Erika when we got there. But we rarely used it since the 3 women in the previous picture were assigned to us the whole time. It was very humbling and a bit difficult to be wageni (visitors). They would not let us do any work like cooking, cleaning, washing, etc…and they would not let us sit on the ground.
They have made some pottery as a test for making roof tiles. The paint is actually an extract from the root of a local tree.
They do have a truck and a small motorcycle for the organization of 170 people. I spent parts of 3 days working on the truck. It needs a fuel filter, an exhaust valve, a radiator, a clutch disk, a starter and a battery. Other than that it is in great shape.
But who needs a starter with a crowd of Africans right?
Tilapia protein project. Feeding African termites.
Sunrise
We initiated a water supply protection project to keep surface water from the upcoming rainy season from having direct access to the drinking water supply.
The project has access to the land to the next-to-last ridge in the distance. and a greater distance in the opposite direction. It also is charged with protecting the area. I think they need some drones.
We are grinding clay for a roof tile test.
KiPembwe, a fatherless boy, attached himself to me the whole time. I left him with my pocket knife…
He made an exact replica of Erika’s camera out of clay. Including a picture on the digital screen.
Kosongo, the carpenter making boards.
A visit from the provincial congressman brought both of the Official National News Orgs of Congo. So we made it into the Congolese national newspaper and the Congolese National Television. But we never saw it. The congressman even sent me a lamb and a request to return to advise him on developing his own community. We used the lamb to have a feast for the whole group the day before we left.
Testing the food they made in a solar cooker they made from cardboard, candy wrappers, and drink case packaging.
The truck didn’t make it even half way to town, so we walked.
Has anyone ever seen a third world village so clean?
A development map of Fube Village complete with industrial parks, green spaces, large residential properties, grid patterned road network, scheduled wind breaks, brick making areas. etc… It is 3 km long and 2 km wide. Curent Population +/- 15,000. Age = 9.5 years.
Super hillarious.
To get the truck home I had to remove the hood. Drain gas from a motor cycle and feed it into the intake of the diesel engine as I road on top of the engine. It was quite fun actually.
The locals were impressed. 
I taught them the standard brick stove developed by one of our students from Nigeria. But they thought it too small and unstable for their large pots of Ugali. So I used Dr. Larry’s principles and did the math to come up with a new idea. I had never built one like this, but I did the math in front of them so they would see how I did it and it turned out to be the cleanest burning rocket stove I ever built. Here it is still smoking because the mortar is all still wet and it is not yet to temperature. It has an oversized chimney. We included an optional air door to reduce the door opening to increase air velocity to help consume more char. It worked really well and sucks air like crazy.
And burns really hot.
The Wamama with all three rocket stoves they built while we were there.
They eat a lot of wild mushrooms since the war. I found these beside our guest house.
This is their sleeping and dining area at the new camp. They are turning the new area into a training facility for development, agriculture, Appropriate technology, business, vocational training, etc…
A soccer ball made by someone of the Bemba tribe in Zambia. It is made from a condom wrapped in cloth and string pulled from a tire. and a plastic bag. I was very impressed. I would have bought the ball to bring home as a model, but they would not have had another one to replace it. So we just played with the children in the road until the men finished patching our tire.
Billy, Thanks for the great report. Strange, of all the things you showed, the one that gave me the strongest jolt was the blue paint from a local tree root.
The Rwanda trip was good and painful. Several critical misunderstandings were exposed and addressed. We finally have a good way to correspond between visits. I see that we are going to have to slow things down in order to speed things up.
Another excellent read is The Culture Map by Erwin Meyer. Great tools and insights for working across 8 cultural variables: Communicating, Evaluating, Persuading, Leading, Deciding, Trusting, Disagreeing and Scheduling.
You are most likely better off to do a solar dehydrator, for dehydration you want low temperatures and airflow. They can burn wood for other things. Even though they have a huge forest it is still a limited resource.
You most likely want a barnes lathe design. but for just broom handles a dowel maker type of machine might be easier.
Usually you make the brick, then use the bricks to build the kiln and use multiple layers of bricks. There are a number of kiln designs, but most of them use several days of cooking time, and fairly tightly controlled temperatures.
They maybe better served with an electric kiln and solar panels, and use an intermittent process to bake them. There are several pottery studios in Michigan that use solar panels for their kilns. There are also designs that use parabolic mirrors to heat things a similar concept there is/was a french one built to melt scrap metal.
My experience with solar driers is that they don’t move enough air to keep very wet fruit from molding. But I hear you about the wood. My hope is that it could be done using waste wood. Maybe slabs from a mill or the tree tops they are currently burning up just to get rid of. Unfortunately they are using fire as a tool far too much. But I like the mirror idea too.
The brick thing is widely used throughout the whole region. They make mud bricks and stack them so the hot gasses from a fire will pass between them. But they seal the whole thing externally with mud. I don’t know how long they fire them. I am sure it is a long time. Then they remove the mud and take out the bricks. I’m afraid solar tech is about as likely for them as my building my own space station. They live on about a dime a day. We have hopes of helping them change that though.
I have used fresnel lenses to melt metal and to make intensive solar cookers.
Thanks for the tip on the lathe. I’ll look into it. I had an idea for it from an old missionary friend of mine that invented something he called a “continuous slip drive” using a rope, and inner tube and a bicycle hub. But I am looking for something a little tougher.
Bruce: I’ve read that book. You’re right. It’s good. Another one I got into recently and was impressed with is “Extreme Ownership” by Jocko Willink. I think it is very useful for training leaders, especially in most timid African cultures. You might check it out.
Cross cultural communication problems have to be the biggest hinderance to this work for the past 100 years. The group we are working with often has NGO’s drive in in their fancy trucks, take a bunch of pictures, and drive out without anyone really knowing what they are doing and why. The fact is, they are impressed with the work there and want to show others how it is done. But the locals don’t understand it and don’t like it. After we were there taking pictures for 3 or 4 days they were asked how they felt about it. The answer was, “Since they will sit on the ground like we do, they can have all the pictures they want.” So many dev. workers just don’t get that it is about people, not projects.
Maybe maybe not. There are a couple of organizations that do go into remote villages like that and provide solar panels. There are also organizations designed to sell tools with a payback period to help their business get started. Like the lathe so when they sell the broom handles, they can pay back the loan in small chunks so the organization can reuse the money to help someone else. However, firebricks are typically fired for like a week straight. Typically they absorb and radiate heat, and chances are they may be better served with a brick that actually insulates or reflects heat.
There is a balance especially if you add too much. I can’t imagine they can’t dry fruit. It is simply airflow and heat, and it should work if you use convection currents.
I have seen videos on that. But the heat is so concentrated that it won’t work that well for a kiln where you need even temperatures. I’m not sure it is all that great for pottery. Mylar is an excellent, cheap reflecting material though.
Fine Woodworking magazine featured detailed how to articles on a pedal powered lathe and a bandsaw back around 1983 - 1986.
Actually I think the lathe was treadle powered through a bike ratcheting drive. There’s another article online for a plywood bandsaw, but really 2" tubular steel is more practical for the frame.
I think these people could go to town with either, largely based on bicycle parts.
I did find this MEN article at a quick glance.
You’ll like this one:
Wish I could go there with you, probably never come back.
If we hadn’t left the children here we would probably still be there. I kow Erika would be.LOL
Billy, Thanks for the tip on Extreme Ownership. I see that Willink and Babin have a brand new one: The Dichotomy of Leadership.
You are so right about “sit on the ground.” Spending nights in the village away from hotel creature comforts did more for my credibility than anything else I’ve done in Africa. There is nothing quite like sitting around a fire intently watching, listening and laughing together. Our ability to create cool stuff together went up exponentially after spending unstructured time together.
Billy, Your internet issue got me thinking about WIKIREADER. An old wikireader plus updated 2018 content is about $50 on Ebay. Would that little white box have answered those and many other questions? BTW, this is available in several languages.
I’m too ignorant of it to know if it would have done the job. I’ll look into it.
I’ve also been thinking about that statement I made. I am not sure if full blown access to the internet right away would be a great idea. Having never been exposed to so many outside ideas, they might drown in them. But someone needs to have access to the information without having to travel 500 miles to get it.
Also, I am still pretty sick. I broke a cardinal rule to not eat uncooked leafy greens in an unknown 3rd world setting. I ate some lettuce in Ethiopia and as soon as I hit DC I got pretty sick. Still problematic and had a training to teach today for 75 19 year olds. Good times! Made it through ok, but ready for bed. It’s 2:30 pm here but my body thinks it’s 9:30.
There was a free satellite based orgnization, that allowed read-only access to the internet,which may have ended up as wikireader as I can’t find it or think of the name of it. But there is this group that serves Africa.
https://quika.online/
I wonder if this would help with getting the types of answers they would be looking for.
Super cool resources guys.! Thanks. ! Seriously…
The questions we got were very wide spread in substance. Everything from, “why won’t my baby’s head stop growing?” to “Is this gem stone a precious diamond?” So, while the internet is limited in its accuracy, it is still pretty easy to get some kind of an answer that you can have a pretty good bit of confidence in.
Well you probably won’t find answers to the baby head questions on mother earth news but I would trust the information to be accurate. Lol
I wonder if Wikipedia has some sort of resource on a hard drive? They say it’s as good or better than Britannica now.
There is a lot of bunk on the internet, you have to get them over the hump of what someone says on the internet might not be true especially from seemingly trustworthy blog sites posing as news. Or even it might be true only in a limited scope. The deeper you get into a subject the fewer resources you can find about the subject.
I’ve been reading back over posts I missed the last several weeks.
Wayne was explaining sorghum syrup and cat head biscuits…
Down here it is pronounced something like sawgum.
and a cathead biscuit always gets “choked” off the dough loaf by hand, not cut with a cookie cutter. Like Wayne said, the top is rough and pointy like a rock.
Not much better than fresh hot sogum syrup on fresh catheads with fresh raw butter and some sausage or bacon. But the meat is actually overkill and not actually necessary.
Hey Billy .
I think I can remember when I was a kid sawgum surp was used as currency 