Manufacturing Begins

A new phase for the bicycle maize sheller started this Monday. We’re shifting from hammering out one prototype at a time in the workshop to sending out designs for medium-scale manufacturing. Unusually long and frequent power outages have thrown a wrench into the plan for the past two weeks, but we had electricity almost all day today. It was refreshing to hear the workshop fill up with happy grinding and welding sounds as everyone worked extra hard to make up for lost time.

The maize shellers that we sell will be made by hired technicians, or mafundi. There are two workshops to choose from just on either side of Twende. Hiring a fundi here is a little different from hiring a machine shop. Instead of making carefully triple-checked drawings and sending them off, I started by walking over to the shop next door with a sample of the part I wanted. After a brief negotiation over price, they gave us a quote. I gave them a jig, a verbal explanation of the details, and a sketch on graph paper in case of any questions. The fundi seemed a little bemused by my insistence that he keep the sketch. Now, if the power stays on, they’ll be making one unit then bringing it by for us to quality check. If everything looks good, we’ll order a larger batch.

I’m not saying there aren’t large machine shops here. Some of my coworkers have gotten jobs done at shops with mills, lathes and all the tools we’re accustomed to. But for the maize sheller, all I really need is a drill, a welder, and a grinder—or a hacksaw if the power’s out and you’re desperate. 

Field Testing Update

Hey hey hey.

Last week’s trip to Babati was educational, but just spawned a lot more questions.

We had arranged to visit our two testers in Singe, but on arrival, we found out they were busy at a political rally. (The general election is in October.) We met with our other customer in Galapo. So far, he’s happy with the bicycle maize sheller he rented from us, but he’s still waiting for his maize to dry more before shelling it all. He tested it once and shelled one gunia (~100kg) in a little under an hour. Apparently his children did most of the shelling, and to them it was a game. Maybe after an hour or more of shelling, the novelty will wear off, but this does support our assumption that the bicycle allows a broader range of people to shell maize. As far as I know, kupiga shelling is typically done by adult men because of the physical strength required. The children were at school when we arrived, so I’m hoping to speak with them next time we visit.

I learned that more farmers than I originally thought might be using motorized shelling services. Our customer in Galapo told us that at this time of year, someone constantly travels around the village with a motorized sheller and anyone with more than five acres of maize is likely to pay 1,300tsh per gunia to have his/her crop shelled. To me, this seems like a large expense since we’ve been told the sale price for a gunia of maize starts around 50,000tsh. But he explained that the cost is acceptable because it saves time that farmers need for taking care of other crops. His farm is around 6 acres, and he’s planning to use the bicycle sheller for all of his harvest. Most other farmers we’ve spoken with have closer to 2 acres. What is clear to me is that I have a lot more research to do before I can nail down a good profile of our target market.

In other news, I'm starting to get some parts manufactured to sell bicycle maize sheller kits at the Nane Nane festival. I'll post more details soon.

Internship at USAID

My name is David Hines. I am interning at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) in the U.S. Global Development Lab in Washington, D.C. from May to August 2015. I am fortunate to be supported by Olin College of Engineering and MIT D-Lab’s International Development Innovation Network. In May 2015, I graduated from Babson College with a Bachelors of Science in Business Administration. At Babson, I concentrated in Technology, Entrepreneurship, & Design and Global Business Management.

This will be my second summer on the Babson-Olin-Wellesley International Development Blog. In July and August 2014, I blogged about my experience participating in the International Development Design Summit (IDDS) in Arusha, Tanzania. IDDS is a hands-on product design experience that brings together innovators from around the world to co-create low-cost, appropriate technologies to improve the lives of people living in poverty. Two of my favorite blogs from last summer are about design in a developing country context and about the incredible diversity of participants IDDS draws.

Upper Left: On Saturday, May 16, 2015 I received my diploma from Babson. Upper Right and Lower Left: On May 17, I drove 9 hours from Boston to Washington, D.C. The car was packed to capacity. I made sure to bring my bike which has been a valuable asset commuting around the city. Lower Right: May 18, I began New Employee Orientation. I am fortunate to have received security clearance despite being a dual citizen. My badge allows me access to the USAID offices in the Ronald Reagan Building at 1300 Pennsylvania Ave NW.

Teaching the Basics

Sorry for the break in updates. I was recently joined in my electrical work at Twende by a Kenyan engineering student from Kenyatta University named Odawa. We have been continuing our work in educational programs, and this week we taught two workshops at two different schools in Arusha.

The workshop itself was a very simple lesson in voltage, current and resistance. We used a 9V battery and a couple of resistors to light up an LED, observing the difference in brightness when the resistors are connected in parallel and in series. For the primary students, this was enough of an introduction. 

They were really excited to see the light come on when they made the connection. For the secondary school students, we wanted to take it one step further and teach them a little bit of soldering. We purchased a few soldering irons and some protoboards from the local electrical store, and created a few diagrams explaining the layout of protoboards. We then guided them through the process of heating up the solder and making connections on the board. It was at this point that a pipe burst in the back of the classroom, and water started shooting 4 feet in the air like a geyser. Needless to say, this was a little distracting but we proceeded as if the back of the classroom was not slowly filling up with water while the teacher found some people to help stop the leak. The students managed to stay focused, and finished the soldering project, which involved a battery, LED and a potentiometer. With the finished product, they were able to control the brightness of the LED by turning the knob, something that they really enjoyed playing with. The students who finished the project early then started helping their friends. It was great to see that they were able to apply their newfound knowledge and help their classmates.

The teacher was very happy with our work, and asked us to come back next week! We are now talking about ways to bridge the gap in teaching electronics. I’ve found that the basics of teaching LED circuits and ohm’s law is pretty straightforward, but to do anything else is sort of a big step. We’re hoping to bridge the gap with the solar charger we’ve been working on, which isn’t very complicated and mostly consists of a voltage divider, capacitor, solar panel and battery pack. We’ve settled on a design that works, but it is fragile and we are frequently having to resolder broken connections. The components are also a tad expensive, especially the rechargeable batteries. Having a solar power bank is very useful, so it could potentially be worth it if we can find a way to make it more rugged. In the meantime, we are looking into other simple projects that people can learn something from, and ideally will be something they can take home and use.

Week 6: Back into the Village!

On Sunday night, my design professors Oscar Mur-Miranda and Ben Linder arrived at IDDS to help support teams as they prototype and determine their final project direction. It was so great to see familiar faces from Olin!

Community Visits II (Monday, July 20^th 2015 – Wednesday, July 22^nd 2015):

At this point, all of the IDDS design teams have their area of opportunity framed are generating ideas for solutions. Here is a list of the eight design teams and their topic. During their first visit in their communities, the teams focused on gather information and identifying areas of opportunity. This time, the teams went back to their community to receive feedback on their solution ideas with users and stakeholders.

There are four different community sites where the eight teams went. I spent most of my community visits traveling with Zubaida and Habib to visit three of the four community visit sites: Kuthambakkam village (~45 min. – 1hr away), Tribal Health Initiative (~5 – 6 hours away), and Chengalpet (~1 hr away, which is where I was located last week).

On Monday, we went to Kuthambakkam. The design team focusing on preventing anemia by increasing iron intake met with Mr. Elango and then interviewed some of the women working in the shop. I sat in on the discussions and saw where ayzh produces their kits!

On Tuesday, we drove to Tribal Health Initiative (THI), a small private healthcare center integrated within the community village. The long roads to THI was so bad a “non-pregnant woman would deliver”; however, visiting THI was worth it. Imagine a hospital in the woods. There were little trails connecting the different buildings surrounded by trees. The air felt so fresh. Acres of fields stretched out just on the other side of wire fence. It was beautiful. The setup was refreshing compared to the jail-like gates separating buildings and areas packed with people in need waiting that I have previously seen.

Tribal Health Initiative Sign

At THI, Zubaida allowed me to sit in on her conversation with a couple nurses who distribute ayzh’s clean birth kit (CBK) to women on their last pre-natal checkup. The CBK is given ahead of time with the intention that the mothers will bring the CBK with them to the institution they deliver at. Because I discovered not many mothers know about infection last week, it’s encouraging that healthcare workers explain the purpose of the kit before delivery to educate the mother about infection and the importance of clean birth.

An IDDS team synthesizes their experience testing their ideas with users in the morning

On Wednesday morning, I went to Chengalpet by myself to continue interviewing new mothers and pregnant women on their perception of their delivery (See “mini-study” in Week 5). This time my translator was Sujatha, previous president of the International Planned Parenthood Association for the South Asia region. I am honored she was even willing to devote a couple hours to help me with my interviews! Could I get a better translator to myself?

We went to a small district hospital that was giving out vaccines for pregnant women and new mothers. There, we talked with 4 new mothers with infants that were just a few days old. During the interviews, Sujatha was amazing at helping the women feel comfortable and translating accurately. Then, one woman we interviewed mentioned that two of her neighbors were pregnant. We hopped in the car with her and went over to her house.

Soon after we arrived, two pregnant women, both who have delivered before and were now around 7 months pregnant, emerged from their houses. We sat on a mat as we talked about how they were feeling about their upcoming delivery. When I asked if they had any complications with their first delivery, one said no and the other said a C-section. When I asked how long they stayed in the hospital, the one with normal delivery said 3-5 days and one who had a C-section said 8 days. When I ask if they had any complications such as an infection, a woman, who was listening on our conversation, mentioned she had an infection after delivering her second child (who was now 2). I asked where she think she got the infection and she claimed to have gotten the infection from a bad apple at the hospital. Then, the women who had a C-section mentioned she got an infection in her stitches and had to stay in the hospital for ten more days. At first, I was really confused because this information contradicted what she previously said of staying the hospital for 8 days. After clarifying, she stayed a total of 18 days in the hospital after delivering her first child because of the C-section (first 8 days) and infection (the next 10 days). Wow! This was fascinating! It surprised me that the woman who spoke up about her infection in the hospital attributed it to a bad apple. Infection seems to be an issue that the women do not talk about because they haven’t been given the information of knowing where infection can come from and how to recognize it.

Let's talk about clean birth!

At the end of the interviews, I gave each woman a clean birth kit and collected their contact information to do a follow-up interview on their experience after they deliver in the Fall.

Thursday, July 23^rd 2015: IDDS potluck!!! We went off-campus to a farmhouse for people from different areas to cook food from their home region. Although the cooking took a long time, the food was delicious!!!

Friday, July 24^th 2015: We had the first ayzh meeting with the entire team in person (10 people in all)!! I felt honored to even be invited as an intern!

Upcoming this week:

It’s the last week of IDDS – Aarogyam. Participants are building prototypes to prepare for their final presentations on this Friday at 3:00pm on campus!

English Vinglish

Hi Everyone!

I was recently tasked with teaching a 3-day entrepreneurship curriculum to volunteers and later on, I will be telling the students all about entrepreneurship but before I begin, I have to give context. I work at Agastya International Foundation, an organization that has its campus based in a village next to Gudupalli. English is the student's third or fourth language and it takes them a while to understand simple English sentences. I love teaching and somehow, I believe that my love for teaching should surpass all other fears I might have; like the inability to communicate because I don't speak the local language.

After watching the movie English Vinglish, I realized that the language of emotion and kindness is more powerful than a common language. I also helped teach entrepreneurship in Tanzania where English was not the primary language but the students understood the concepts especially when they related to their surroundings. Teaching will be a challenge with language being such a barrier but there are methods to overcoming this barrier. However, teaching in Tanzania has taught me that:

• finding the native language equivalent of what your are saying in English is a great way to relate to the children and also the best way to get laughed at for trying. 
• Avoiding slang is also on the agenda of things that I will have to stop doing. 
• Speaking slowly is also very helpful because words are pronounced differently everywhere.

That's all for now. I will update you on whether my attempts were valid or if I failed miserably to convey the gospel of entrepreneurial truth. 

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.