First thoughts of SolarAid Tanzania...

Scottish and Southern Energy - one of SolarAid's funders- recently sent an employee out to Tanzania to volunteer for a month. Her name is Helen Dalgliesh and she is a Hydro-Engineer.

SSE employee Helen Dalgliesh tests the output of microsolar panels with SolarAid's Head of Programmes John Keane in the office at Dar es Salaam

Read Helen's update and thoughts from Southern Tanzania so far...

"I am now safely in the town of Iringa in the Southern Highlands of Tanzania. I travelled up yesterday, on a bus that took about 8 hours. I was lucky. The journey was pretty smooth as the road we followed was the main route from Tanzania to Zambia so metalled all the way.

Typically, the most dangerous thing I have encountered so far has been the roads. Some of the over-taking manoeuvres carried out yesterday were so much worse than anything I have ever seen in the UK.

The views from the bus were fantastic - finally, I have seen zebra, impala, giraffe and monkeys in their natural environment. For one hundred or so kilometres we followed the great Ruaha River (the tailrace of the Mtwere hydro station...) so climbing out of the valley and looking across to the green forested mountains beyond was fabulous.

The photo above shows my first power station construction. Huge at 6W! This is enough to charge a mobile phone and batteries though, and it allows us to do some testing of the realistic output from the cells, plus the charge lifetime of the batteries with the devices that they use here.

Once I arrived at Iringa it wasn't long before I met the people of Neema Crafts which is where I will spend my time. I'm very excited about getting started!"