ver the last week I have been very busy; with Neil back at NIT we have been catching up on what he has missed during his time away. On Monday morning we met with the head of the TSES (Transport safety and environmental studies) department, to discuss the arrangement for the meeting we had planned for the following day. Unfortunately due to a few misunderstandings we decided to postpone the meeting to enable all the required people to attend and the necessary matters to be addressed to their full extent. The meeting will now be held next Tuesday and we hopefully will be able to have a very productive meeting to discuss the highlighted points from the previous meeting with a larger audience. On Tuesday I had the pleasure of being invited to attend a meeting with SUMATRA (the surface and marine transport regulatory authority) to discuss the ongoing implementation of a bodaboda curriculum in Tanzania; the curriculum has been developed by Transaid. Bodabodas are motorcycle taxis which are used as a cheap form of transport and while many locals will argue they are the quickest way to negotiate the horrible traffic in Dar es Salaam, they are the cause of a very high percentage of the road accidents here. In some of the hospitals I have been informed that they have full wards of patients who have been admitted following bodaboda accidents. The use of helmets is rare on bodabodas and they often carry three or more people (regularly including children). The introduction of standardised training for these drivers could increase road safety exponentially. Bodabodas are a needed form of transport to allow people in rural areas to travel affordably so investment into training should be high on the priority list of the government authorities going forward. The other main event of my week was attending the 4th African logistics conference. The conference was held on Thursday and Friday at the Seacliff hotel in Dar es Salaam with attendees from across Eastern and Southern Africa along with delegates from various European countries. The conference was aimed at humanitarian supply chains in Africa and focused on the relationships between public and private companies to provide the most efficient aid, the use of technology to improve the supply chain which concluded with a large section on cash transfer programs that take advantage of mobile phones to provide money to people in need. Many of the organisations who work to provide aid in Africa are now providing money directly to families to encourage investment into their local economies. It was highlighted that often when people are struggling to feed their families it is not due to a lack of available food in the local area, but a lack in funds from the families to purchase the food – this could be a result of them having to flee conflict and leave their homes and sources of income behind. Many of the speakers discussed how the move to providing aid through money directly empowering is empowering for families and often more effective than donating consumables, because a family has a better idea of what they need than an outside organisation that is looking at the bigger picture over individual cases. I found the topics on the second day particularly interesting as they focused heavily on the use of ERP (enterprise resource planning) systems to streamline the supply chain linked with the use of WMS (warehouse management systems) to manage the supply of consumables. In my previous placements with XPO Logistics I have had a lot of interaction with the implementation and design of WMS systems, so hearing how they are implemented in Africa and how their unique challenges (like unreliable power and internet connection) are addressed was fascinating. Additionally my dissertation topic was directly related to ERP systems so I felt that I was developing a much wider knowledge of the subject through the discussions from a humanitarian prospective. The conference could not have been held in a nicer venue, arriving in the early morning the views of the Indian Ocean were superb and something that was enjoyed by everyone during the breaks throughout the day. On Friday night after returning from the second long day at the conference I took the gamble with our oven (that more resembles a microwave) to make some cakes for the Transaid coordinator – whose Birthday was on Saturday. I decided to make my signature bake to be on the safe side, a take on Bakewell tarts however the biggest aspect of the cupcake is on the almond flavoured sponge cake (accompanied by pastry and raspberry jam). The cakes themselves actually turned out a lot better than I expected and there were no complaints from anyone who ate them so I am declaring it a success. I was not too happy with the pastry but I think our house is just too warm to make really good pastry. The lack of a baking section in the supermarkets here was a little bit limiting – fortunately I was able to source most of the ingredients from the supermarket near the Seacliff which has a vast amount of imported food from the UK. The only real difference to the ingredients I use at home for my almond tart cupcakes was red glace cherries, on this occasion I had to settle for green which made them look slightly strange. I finished my week again at underwater hockey; it was great fun and more people who I have not seen since I had my break, to recover from malaria were there so it was fantastic to be able to catch up with them again.Unfortunately next week I will not be able to attend underwater hockey due to the elections. Voting is taking place on Sunday 25th October and while everyone is hopeful that the elections will pass peacefully with no issues, as a precaution I am following strict orders to restrict my movements during the day of voting and the following few days before the results are announced. The enthusiasm of the locals towards the elections is amazing, everyone seems to have an opinion and wants to get involved. The streets of Dar es Salaam are now covered with posters for the two main presidential candidates and flags for both parties are everywhere. When I was travelling in my taxi to underwater hockey I witnessed a group of people parading town the street with drums, waving flags for one of the parties and singing very jubilantly. |