How to Shell Maize

Hi everybody!

We’re working hard here at Twende to reach a reference design for the maize sheller so that we can sell a preview at Nane Nane, a big Tanzanian agricultural festival during the first week of August. We have two more shellers in the field now, both in Singe, another Babati village. Tomorrow, we’ll go check in on all three sheller owners.

On this trip, we also plan to learn more about existing methods of maize shelling. We’ve seen and heard of several other ways to shell maize and we want to characterize them with reliable numbers for speed and cost, both in time and money. Manual shelling seems to be the most common method for removing kernels from the maize cobs. If the maize is dry, you can pop kernels off with your fingers or by twisting the cob. As you can probably imagine, it takes a while to fill a gunia—the standard 100kg sack—this way.

To speed up the process, farmers will instead pile the maize in a tarp or sack and beat it with sticks. We call this the kupiga method. Kupiga means “to hit.” It’s faster, but it breaks the cobs and many of the kernels. And it’s still hard work. On every user visit, we’ve tried to nail down some sort of rate estimate for this method, but responses are all over the place. The absolute fastest quote we’ve heard is 1 gunia per hour, but most of the people we interviewed guessed lower. Kupiga shelling also usually requires multiple workers who the farmer pays either in cash or in food and drinks for a day of work.

Shelling machines do exist, but most of our target customers either can’t afford them or don’t harvest enough maize to take full advantage of them. We’ve found  motorized shellers powered by tractors or motorcycle motors in most villages we’ve visited. During bountiful harvests, some of the farmers we’ve met will pay owners of smaller motorized machines to shell their maize for a fee per gunia. We’ve heard of large tractor-powered shellers that are operated by 12 workers and can shell 30 gunia—3000 kg—per hour. Those machines sound too large to be economical for our target market, but we’re hoping to see one on our next trip to Babati. Learning about existing shelling technologies and business models will teach us more about our customers’ needs and help us assess the feasibility of our bicycle-powered sheller.

Note: I took some explanatory pictures to post here, but I've been having a bit of computer trouble. I'll try to update this entry with pictures soon.

Week 5: Into the Village

Community Visits (Monday, July 13^th –Wednesday, July 14^th 2015):

I went with about 21 IDDS participants and design facilitators to a village called Uttiramerur. The IDDS participant teams were there to gather more information about their healthcare related topic from the local community by interviewing the local people. I went to interview pregnant women and women who recently had a baby for a mini-study for ayzh to understand how the kits change the perception of women’s care.

The Adventures of Rooming with your Boss:

We stayed in a small collection of guest houses and I shared a cabin with Zubaida. Zubaida traveled to the village separately and soon after she settled into the cabin, she claimed, “Kelly, do you like frogs? There is a frog in the commode.” I gave a puzzled look. Really? We went and checked it out. I don’t particularly like frogs. Luckily Aspen and Kendra (two of the female design facilitators) were outside the cabin. I told them about the frog in the commode and Aspen exclaimed, “I love frogs!” Whoo! I was saved! Aspen and Kendra were really into the situation. They snapped photos of frog in the commode and Zubaida cried, “why are you taking pictures of the frog?! I want to go pee!” I was dying on the bed in laughter. Kendra and Aspen managed to get the frog out with a bucket and peebuddy!

Out in the Villages:

Life in India’s villages is far different from the city. I really enjoyed walking around in the villages. The thatched wooden and palm leave houses were simple and beautiful. The animals roamed and children played. In the evening, I swear I could hear consistent laughter or music in the background at all times.

Kelly and her cohort of pregnant women and new mothers (aka. The mini-study):

One baby reaches for my notebook as I talk with the mother 

As I previously mentioned, I was on my mission to find mothers with young babies and pregnant women in the third trimester who were willing to tell me about their thoughts and feelings of their delivery. The women who recently had a baby were my control group and I asked them about how their labor experience (what happened? Who were you with? How did you feel? Did it go as you expected? How do you think the quality of your care could be improved?). For the pregnant women, I asked about their hopes for their delivery, how they expect it to go, and how they hoped to be cared for by the healthcare workers. Then, I explained ayzh’s clean birth kit and gave them one to bring with them to the health institution for the healthcare workers to during their delivery. I received their contact information to hopefully follow-up in a couple months to discuss how their delivery actually went with the clean birth kit. Although the mini-study is not scientific, it will hopefully be helping in gauging the women’s perceptions of the clean birth kit. During this community visit I found 3 pregnant women and 2 new mothers who were willing to talk with me.

Interviewing women about their labor and delivery experience through a translator is challenging, especially because I was sharing a translator with the IDDS participants and sometimes even had a local IDDS participant as a translator. I found it difficult to connect with the women and get the information I wanted with indirect communication. Here is an example from the interview I transcribed:

KB: “… And, how do you hope to be cared for by the institution?”

[pause]

KB: “How does she hope the healthcare workers will care for her? Like how does she hope they will treat her?”

--Translator and Woman talking— …

Translator: “She… She hopes from the best of the [mumble]” [woman continues to talk] “She hopes for a normal delivery”

KB: “Okay, Okay. For normal delivery. But how does she want to be cared for by the healthcare workers”

--Pregnant woman talking—

KB: “how does she hope that they treat her?”

Translator: “She wants to be good…” [woman continues to talk] “She is saying that [mumble](she has good care) in the PHC.”

KB: “uhuh”

Translator: “They take good care, so she hopes for the same care.”

I reiterate: It was really challenging and could be frustrating at times. Sometimes, I never know if they understand what I am asking.

In all of my interviews, the mothers wanted to have a normal delivery. All of them want good care and many, as shown in the interview above, believe that they receive good care. However, this is not necessarily the case. One of the IDDS participants did her medical residency in Chengalpet, a local district hospital and she told me about having to do many procedures without the proper supplies or equipment, sometimes not even having tape to hold an IV in. In many ways ayzh is ahead of its time by providing tools for healthcare workers to provide quality care for women who don’t know what quality care means. The village women don’t seem to know about infection in the same way I do, even though it is common and many healthcare providers have expressed concern about it. As I continue my work, I hope to figure out the context of infection that resonates with them (puss in a wound?) to better understand their perspective. 

Wednesday, July 15^th 2015:. Imagine going into the OR with a second person in the room having the same procedure. The doctor is going to use the same tools for both procedures. We visited another health clinic, where this is the reality for many patients.

OR with two tables

Thursday, July 16^th 2015: Fasting. I’ve always been curious about what it would be like to fast for Ramadan. Given that there are about 5-10 Muslims here (some fasting every day, others fasting when they feel like it), I decided that this is a good time. I woke around 3:20 am to eat before 4:15am. Because I felt set on carbohydrates from all the Indian sweets, Ghana chocolate and mango I ate the night before, I ate a ton of eggs for protein in hopes that it would keep me full throughout the day. It worked till about mid-morning. During lunch I just read and took a nap because I didn’t get much sleep anyway from waking at 3am. I admire my Muslim peers not only in the immense self-discipline required to sit at a table with people eating around you, but also the capacity to deal with the sleep deprivation that comes with waking in the middle of the night to eat and then functioning throughout the day without caffeine.

Friday, July 17^th 2015: I was debating about fasting again because it was the last day of Ramadan, but after feeling unproductive yesterday, I determined that I should have some food to (A) feel better during the day & (B) focus better when working. I think it was a good decision for me, as I was definitely more focused. After dinner, the IDDS organizers and I went south to Pondicherry, India.

Saturday, July 18^th 2015:

We went to Sri Aurobindo Ashram. It was pretty touristy, but lovely. It’s the place that has been closest to my “normal”. There was a wonderful little café where I had a delicious salad (first one in more than a month!). After lunch, I went biking to the meditation center with Sanjukta and Karl. We biked on a small dirt biking path through the incredible gardens!

Biking on the garden trails!

Afterwards, we all went to the beach. The beach scene is quite different. It is essentially all men in the water, but I jumped in with a couple friends!

Upcoming Week:

I am going back into the village for Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday (no internet)! I plan to continue interviewing women and hope to probe their understanding of infection.

Our First Customer

Good news, everyone!

We have officially received payment for the first of this summer’s round of maize shellers. Abdon, Rosy, and I took a second trip to Babati to demonstrate the machine for a group of MVIWATA members in the village of Galapo. After installing shellers on bicycles owned by two of the farmers there, we got to work on a big pile of dried maize.

The new design worked great, and I personally think it looks pretty slick. We’ve simplified the adapter that mounts to the sheller body on the bicycle and added some rigidity to ensure it stays locked in place during use.  Everyone who tried out the machine seemed to like it, and we met our first customer, Gaspar, there. He’s renting one sheller kit for one month. It looks like harvesting in Babati is still ramping up. Peak shelling time will probably land in mid-August, but we want to put these prototypes to work and get feedback as soon as possible. There was a pile of big tasty-looking maize drying outside the house where we held our demo, so there should definitely be enough for Gaspar to make good use of the machine. He plans to use it on his own maize first then make some money shelling other farmers’ crop. I’m excited to see how this plays out.

Here’s the maize sheller kit as it stands now:

-machine

-a rugged stand to keep the bicycle up (The stand that comes with the bicycles here won’t support someone pedaling, and very few of the bicycles we see still have their original stands.)

-chain

-2 spanners for maintenance

-crate for packaging and for holding maize cobs ready to be shelled

-shelf to put the crate in front of the handlebars, conveniently within reach of the operator

                                       

Week 4: Let the International Design Summit Begin!

 IDDS Overview:

This week was the first week of the International Developing Design Summit (IDDS) in Chennai that will be held until Aug. 1^st. IDDS is a hands-on design experience that brings people from diverse nationalities and socioeconomic statuses to create low-cost, practical innovations to improve the lives of people living in poverty. During the summit, participants work in teams with community members from developing countries, learn the design process, identify problems and solutions and test prototypes.

Although IDDS is officially hosted by HIVE InnoSpace Foundation, a non-profit organization to support innovators addressing development issues, and organized in collaboration with IDIN network members from the MIT D-Lab, a couple ayzh members are involved in running the program. Habib is the lead organizer, Zubaida is the lead instructor and Sanjukta is one of the design facilitators. Over the week of preparation, I have been blown away by the amount of hard work that each organizer has put into this experience over the past 6 months! I swear it has been a part-time job for many of them! Despite all of the work beforehand, there have still be many late nights/early mornings in the beginning of this week.

IDDS is on an engineering college campus. I am staying at the college campus doing my ayzh work on the sidelines (which I am in the same room the participants or Zubaida and Habib, but doing different work). I some support work for IDDS, such as printing papers, communicating with guest speakers, etc.

Week Overview:

Monday, July 6^th 2015: First day kick-off!! It was fun to meet the participants watch them do their first design activity. Ticora Jones from USAID, a person I now really admire, attended the opening of the summit and she held a talk in the evening where she described her journey from a material science engineer to the USAID development lab. I really enjoyed being around her the past couple of days because it’s clear how much she values relationships based on how she treats everyone with such respect. She has mastered the art of making everyone in a large audience feel personally valued.  

Tuesday, July 7^th 2015: It was nice to relax a bit in the afternoon by reading my current book Americanah, which is excellent so far. I also played a little bit of soccer and basketball! India has a pretty sedentary life style and it felt great to do a little physical activity again.

Wednesday, July 8^th 2015: Did you know that prescriptions are not necessary here? I went to the pharmacy go get some medications for the design leaders. I literally told the women in a pharmacy what I wanted and purchased the medications for a reasonable price, compared to the US.

IDEO presented their prototype work!!*(See Below!) I am really curious about how healthcare workers will use it, if they will use it appropriately, and what might arise in the testing process that we haven’t even thought of yet.

Thursday, July 9^th 2015: I felt honored that the house keeper, Lalita cut some fresh flowers to pin in my hair as I was heading out of dorms after putting them together. Lalita is very caring and such a sweetheart!! We are so messy and she works incredibly hard to serve us personally well.

 Flowers and a coconut. What could be better? Ps. Zubaida and Sujatha are in the background!

For IDDS, the participants listened to speakers from a variety of healthcare backgrounds. Sujatha from Family Planning Alliance told a story of how she became interested in a family planning. When she was a young girl, her family had a young woman (~16) as a house worker. The house worker suddenly began to become sick in the morning and would say, “the food did not agree with me this morning”, but it occurred repeatedly. Her stomach began to become bigger. Soon it became clear that she was pregnant and did not know it. When she had labor pains, the family sent her to the hospital (~5 miles away) on their box cart (only transport they had). She gave birth to the baby in the cart about ½ way to the hospital. After delivery, she gave the baby away to the first person she saw. Sujatha asked “what if she knew about and had access to contraceptives? What if she knew what sex was? What if she knew what was happening to her? What if she knew what missing her period for such a long time meant?”  It was a powerful story because it showed the importance of family planning. I realized the privilege of my education, which included health/life skills that is very easy to overlook. I agree with Sujatha that access to family planning information and basic supplies should be a basic right for all.  

Friday, July 10^th 2015: What would you do if there was a zoo right across the street from your college campus? In the afternoon, I walked to the zoo with the IDDS participants for them to practice observing, asking and trying methods of interacting with stakeholders to get extract information. Whoever thought of renting bikes in the zoo was a genius! I rented my sketchy bike that did not have brakes with Jimena, an IDIN intern from Mexico who is working on evaluating IDDS as part of a project in her master’s program. We had so much fun biking up to the animal cages, looking around for the animal, and then continuing to bike the loop of zoo. Could you imagine biking the zoo in the U.S.? What fun!

ELEPHANTS!

Saturday, July 11^th 2015: With my internship, I feel fortunate to have simulating work, feel that my perspective is respected, have housing and food taken-care of and work with such amazing and inspiring people. Additionally, I get to travel around India and go to health centers with local people who know what they are doing. I feel more like a guest than a tourist.

Zubaida, Habib and Sanjukta did a great job helping me celebrate my birthday. In the morning, they sang and, in the evening, we ate our together dinner in Habib and Zubaida’s suite and then had some desert. Many of the participants wished me a happy birthday. I felt well cared for and it was good day!

Coming Up:

I plan on leaving the college campus on Monday to go to the communities with the participants. I will be going to the Chengalpattu area (where I briefly took a day trip before – See Week 3: What am I doing? Project shifts and cultural experiences). This means that I will not have internet access until Wednesday.

How Are You Making a Difference?

Jaya wakes up bright and early in the morning to help work at the fields because her parents had to go to the city to work. The green expanse was waiting for her as usual: soil ready to be tilled and vegetables ready to be plowed. She never complained about the early sacrifices she had to make. She would get the children ready for school then her and her three siblings would walk to school. After coming back home, she would have to do chores and make sure her siblings are fed. They will be doing other miscellaneous work around the house or selling some fruits at the market. Her parents would come later in the evening then she would be free to come to my NGO’s night school. She is my client.

Initially, I was excited to work with an NGO that dealt in education because I am passionate about education. I thought by virtue of working with an NGO, I was already making a difference. My task was to design a water theme park and create a brochure for my NGO’s night school.  The water theme park would make the students understand different aspects of water which will make them more conscious about water use. The brochure would be good for giving the NGO exposure and maybe might help raise more funds for the program. A co-worker of mine asked me, after my first week, “How are you making a difference?” This question dawned on me as odd but I gave him the answers I mentioned above. “What would you want these children to have that you can give?” I contemplated for a while and realized that working for an NGO does not automatically mean you are making a difference. The task is to take initiative to use your skills in meaningful ways.

In addition to the required work, I am now starting a teaching program that helps students get ready and prepared for their careers. A lot of the students want to be teachers, doctors or chattered accountants but they do not know how to get there. I also believe in active citizenry so I will be joining the Design For Change team who inspire brainstorming sessions where students could find problems in their communities, come up with innovative solutions and implement these solutions. This might not make a huge difference but it taps into my skills and passions.

I hope Jaya will reach her dream of becoming a teacher and maybe, she might start helping her siblings with homework or other members of her community. The NGO is not an institution that can do much on its own, your initiative and skills are important, most important to your client: Jaya. 

Meeting the Neighbors

Hi everybody!

The maize sheller is moving along. We’re thinking through the business model and we have a lot of tests to run. We had a productive visit to a village in Babati, about two hours out of Arusha. We presented the machine to about a dozen farmers who tried it out and gave us tons of feedback.  The trip highlighted a few spots for improvements to the design, and we saw that people are already harvesting maize in that region. This is great news, because it means we can start running live tests of the maize shellers. Abdon, our local expert, is working his connections in Babati to find interested farmers. Rosy and I are building at least two more shellers with slightly altered designs. Ideally, we’ll take them back to Babati for a couple days, shell someone’s maize for a couple hours to test them, then lease them at a discount to farmers there. One assumption we’re eager to test is the idea that farmers can use the bicycle maize sheller not just to shell their own crop, but also to start a small business shelling other farmers’ maize. The experiences of these early customers will help us test the machine’s durability and its viability as a small business.

Here in Arusha, there are many organizations doing good work with smallholder farms. Just waving distance from Twende is the Arusha office for MVIWATA, a national farmers’ organization. Governed by its members, MVIWATA helps farmers organize into a network of small local groups to defend their interests, increase communication, and connect them with financial and technical resources. The Arusha representatives have been extremely helpful and have connected us with their office in Babati as well. Their goals dovetail nicely with ours, so I’m looking forward to working with them. They have fine-grained local knowledge from farmers across the country, and I think Twende has many projects that would interest their members.

We also met some folks from the ECHO East Africa Impact Center (http://echonet.org/). Based out of Florida, USA, ECHO has centers in Asia, East Africa and West Africa. They brought us to a village near the Arusha office to check up on the results of some training on conservation agriculture techniques. ECHO’s greatest strengths are not in mechanical technology, but in innovative practices. Strategies like digging contours for water control and building keyhole gardens to take advantage of household waste are effective and affordable to any household. ECHO is already involved in other Twende projects, and I think I’ll learn a lot from them about appropriate agricultural innovations.

Stay tuned for some notes and pictures from our next field visit.

-Ad

Week 3: What am I doing? Project shifts and cultural experiences

Week Overview:

To set some context, the full-time ayzh team includes: Zubaida Bai (CEO), her husband Habib Anwar (Founding Director, Operations and Finance), Rahana Razack (Operations Manager), Dani DiPietro (Business Development) & Sanjukta Das (Research and Innovation Associate), Colleen (Responsible for Business Development and writing grant proposals). This week, I have had the pleasure of getting to know and working with all of them (except for Colleen because she is not in Chennai yet, but I look forward to meeting her). I feel very fortunate to work with some of the most inspiring, bright, and incredible people!

Sunday, June 28^th 2015: The food at the hostel is amazing!! I have really enjoyed watching the women chat as they work so hard in the kitchen to make everything (the idlys, the curies, etc.) from scratch.

Monday, June 29^th 2015: I accidentally drank the water Sunday night and felt quite sick at the beginning of the day. Instead of staying at the hostel for July like originally planned, it was determined that I would be most valuable at the IDDS site at BSAU, an engineering college campus in the suburbs of Chennai so I can work the the participants and be more efficient in my work. I am so thankful that I will be able to be on the sidelines of IDDS!

Tuesday, June 30^th 2015: I moved from the hostel to the IDDS venue with the other IDDS organizers and IDDS leaders from the ayzh team (Zubaida and Habib). The IDDS organizer team has worked very hard to prepare for the summit beginning on Monday, July 6th!

Wednesday, July 1^st 2015: During the day, the focus of my work shifted to supporting IDDS in terms of finalizing the project areas and descriptions. In the evening, Sanjukta, Zubaida, Habib and I had a Skype meeting with IDEO (the design team in San Francisco that is working on developing prototypes of the newborn kit based on their visit about 4 weeks ago). I am somewhat disappointed that we probably will not receive the prototypes and be able to test them within the time I am scheduled to be here. After learning about IDEO's work, I am very curious about how the prototypes will do once deployed and I have really enjoyed working with Sanjukta. This led me to reflect about my work plan here and where I can be most valuable for ayzh.

Zubaida and Habib have been very kind and welcoming to me! I did not have dinner this night, and so Habib made sure that Zubaida picked up some food for me on her way back to the IDDS venue. I am so fortunate to work for people who have gone out of their way to take such good care of me.

Thursday, July 2^nd 2015 – Zubaida and I saw that I may be valuable by analyzing the data that ayzh has collected and looking at the development of ayzh’s current study in incorporating chlorhexidine in their kits. Even though my work on the newborn kit may be limited to working with the supporting institutions, such as IDEO and CAMTech, and looking at a fully disposable kit, I am glad that I can still do other work that will hopefully be useful for ayzh.

Friday, July 3^rd 2015 – I went to district hospital in Chennai called Chengalputtu with a group of IDDS design facilitators (people who will be helping support design teams in developing a product over the next four weeks). India's district hospitals are large “public” hospitals (still need to pay if above the poverty line) in large cities with more specialties such as a neonatal intensive care unit that are not at other health setups in India, which cover more general care (I tend to compare compare district hospitals to a place like Harborview because people come from such a broad area). I thought Chengalputtu was better than Vanivillas (the district hospital I went to in Bangalore), although not by much. Areas in the labor and delivery room were defined by small walls, instead of having a large open room. I saw more healthcare workers, but also more patients. The post-care unit (a room with about 20 beds – not your individual or double rooms common in US hospitals) was full! All the women's lay on their bed with their newborn, while many family members sat on the floor with items such as food, clothing and other necessities for the woman. 

Saturday, July 4^th 2015 – I spent the day doing more work to support IDDS. In the evening, ayzh had a meeting with a business consultant to go over a section of the company’s Theory of Change model for monitoring and evaluation of the Clean Birth Kit. I have been learning more about business logistics than I expected.

The Ignorant Westerner:

When my small group of IDDS design facilitators walked into the post-labor ward in at Chengalputtu, one of mothers seemed curious about the group of visitors who walked in and I walked over to her. While the patient lay in her bed with the new baby, the baby's grandma sat on the ground between beds and a young girl slept underneath the bed. I was invited me to sit on the bed and I asked how she was feeling (I wonder how often she is asked that basic question in the hospital, too bad I cannot understand the language). She proudly showed me her baby boy and the grandma dressed him with tender care. It has been quite humbling to visit the hospital setups because I still have much to learn about the culture and how to interact with patients better. Sabina, an IDDS design facilitator whose family has Indian roots, was next to me as I sat on the mother's bed and interacted with her.I got up to leave and say goodbye, I put my hands together in front of my chest and nodded my head in thanks. As we walked out the door, Sabina told me “Her name was Christine, which means that she is not Hindu. She probably thought putting your hands together and nodding was weird, because she her community does not do it.” Oh. I felt stupid as I suddenly saw myself as an ignorant Westerner who does not know the cultural nuances. I realized my unconscious assumption that such an action was common everywhere in India was not true. Thankfully, my “weird” action was innocuous. It was embarrassing, but a good learning opportunity. I internally chuckle at myself when I imagine the mother and grandma’s perspective and how they probably looked at each other and laughed as I walked out of the ward.

Iftar: Breaking Fast

Habib fasted on Friday for Ramadan and to break it, he organized a small feast for everyone on the walkway in front of the dorms. He invited every one apart of IDDS, as well as the chef and house workers, who are part of the college. We all sat on the ground in front of fresh fruit and snacks. It was delicious! Although I did not fast, I felt united eating on the floor with my new friends and participating in a different cultural tradition. I will happily help Habib break his fast any time! In fact, I hope to fast one day while I am here to understand what it is like. Habib is the kind of charismatic person who is passionate in supporting and nourishing others, both literally and figuratively, through his organizational skills and hard work! He is excellent at taking care of everyone!!!! 

Next Time:

The four-week International Development Design Summit begins July 6th. I will include more context of the background of the summit and ayzh’s role, along with the adventures of the first week!