Recycling/Upcycling African style

Making the most out of a little.

Tanzania is such a contrasting and a varied place. This post is about the amazing ways people create and invent things hear, whether it be for fun, practicality, emergencies, it happens in Africa!

The handmade bike.

Hand crafted bicycle
Made from cardboard, rope, wood and a lot of vision. 

When I witnessed this I was so impressed, gob smacked and humbled and heart melty all at once.

The wheel theme continued...

Good old fashioned fun

Local Boy

Quinn got the bug and made a pretty successful baseball bat

Surgical implements

At first glance you will not know what this stick, my limbs and a few pairs of hands has to do with inventivity. Well fear not, another post will show you the delightful medical procedure that took place in my foot using this twig.  

The boys weekend project

The final product

NB. The antenna is a monkey head, formally on a skipping rope given by me. :/ I was pleased to see it being recycled however!

What I often witnessed and felt saddened by was how quickly this could change, the scenes above can, could and would be heavily contrasted to alternative aspects to this country. The inequality I encountered at different levels and institutions in Tanzania is staggering. The most visible illustration of this to the passing eye, being the huge dominance of  4x4 guzzling safari jeep and toyotas that speed the roads of Tanzania, or the huge commercial developments that are dotted all over Arusha and even in some rural areas. Yes, both of these examples are for the purpose of tourism (don't get me wrong, I do believe tourism has it's positives and should happen, it's just the way it goes about I have the issue with!) and the argument, I know, is that this boosts the economy. The tourism in Tanzania and in Africa in general is BIG big business, but as history and consumerism illustrates and prevails there's only a few who actually feel any of these benefits. 

I know this isn't the best articulation of such issues, this could be a fifth of a badly written blurb on the topic! However I wanted to highlight the contrasts there are in the society here and offer a realistic viewpoint of this. 

These photos alone could suggest something of a stereotyped, media driven view of Africa... of people being poor, having nothing... which to an extent is the case for these kids BUT my point is what they're doing is much better than what their money obsessed seniors are doing to the country! They may be poor because they don't have money but they are happy and rich in life's ingenuity and offerings!

The point is, Tanzania is a beautiful land, blessed with wonderful wildlife and natural resources and the people themselves are clever, inventive and these cases above give us in the western world a lesson to take home, yet sadly all to often, the glamour and bright lights of 'our' western world dominates, creates further divisions and what I am afraid will happen in Tanzania is the gradual erosion of the very aspects of humanity that have been lost in other parts of the world, due to the mass onslaught of so called 'development' and, technology..all things which have created stressed, depressed, money obsessed corrupt nations.

Please Tanzania, don't loose your humanity and fight corruption!