Hamna shida!

Time really does fly by here. It has already been another week and so much has happened. Last weekend I celebrated my 21st birthday, which is an experience I will never forget! All the interns (with the exception of Olivia, who was still Kigali) went out to Tunza before noon on the Sunday. Many of our friends met us out there as well. The weather was perfect and all day we hung out in the sun. We went out on the boat, initially hoping to fish, but instead just touring around the coastline. We also swam, which I probably ended up staying in the water for two hours because it was so nice. It is a very beautiful lake, which I just couldn’t resist despite being warned (sorry Bob) of the many parasites Lake Victoria has. Other people out there, even Med Students were swimming and just told us to take medication when we got back home. It was definitely worth it! For dinner Jan and some others cooked us fish that had been caught by them last week.

The next day we had to get back to work and I got to experience my first meeting with the Mama’s. We discussed the legislation regulations that the Mama’s need to work towards satisfying in order to sell in the Market, packaging was discussed, but need to wait to hear back from Olivia because she found a promising distributor. Tech pack was the company she had found while in Kigali at the Dairy Conference; they are based out of Nairobi and the packages are environmentally friendly. This is great because we were looking for a local (East Africa) supplier and something that wouldn’t have a huge impact on the environment. Marta, Dane and I also explained to the Mama’s the goals of our internships and they all seemed very happy with them.

On Tuesday we had a lot of running around to do in preparation for making the yoghurt and doing the sensory evaluation for Steph, Arja and Yolanda. Steph was going to prepare yoghurt using locally grown flours as thickening agents and for added nutrients. Arja and Yolanda are preparing yoghurt using the plant grown and eaten locally called Moringa. They have successfully added the Moringa to the milk before pasteurization and tested for the probiotic survival. At any concentration they tried, the probiotics were still able to grow, which was key to continuing with their product development of Moringa fortified probiotic yoghurt. We picked up the fresh milk from the kitchen and went to the market to purchase pots and containers to make the yoghurt and store them the next day. Wednesday started off very promising, Arja and Yolanda arrived at around 7:30 am to begin making yoghurt. Steph and I went to get more Moringa (which the store ended up being closed, our first sign of disaster for the day!) and some supplies, while Arja and Yolanda began heating their first batch of milk. When we returned, we discovered that the milk was bad and heating caused it all to curdle. We went back to the kitchen to get new milk and found out that yesterday’s milk was in fact a bad batch. Bringing the new milk back we began all over again only to have our gas run out, meaning our stove wouldn’t work. Yolanda and Arja went to get our gas tank filled and shortly they returned. When we began again the milk heated well, but as soon as we added the Moringa paste it began curdling. This was very confusing because it had worked previously using the exact same method. By the end of the day we had gone through 40 L of milk and still no yoghurt had been made! We decided to postpone the evaluation for Stephanie to Friday and start over tomorrow morning at the Mama’s kitchen. To end the stressful day we made hot chocolate from the little milk we had that was good (it made the day feel a little more successful) and headed to Diner’s for dinner.

Early Thursday we went to the kitchen and the day ran smoothly. All the milk we knew for sure was good and even adding the different thickeners (peanut flour, sweet potato flour and milk powder) worked out great. Arja and Yolanda who were postponing their evaluation to the following week decided to experiment with the Moringa, while we were at the kitchen. They tried adding the Moringa as a paste with milk and the starter culture yoghurt (this was the method used originally), as well as adding the Moringa on its own to the milk. Both caused the milk to become cottage cheese like. We will still need to experiment some more next week; the only cause for it not working this time that we can think of is the Moringa itself. They will purchase new Moringa and try again.

Olivia returned from Kigali with some promising information regarding packaging; she is heading to Nairobi today (June 1st now) to purchase 500ml Tech pack packages and the sealing machine. This will allow us to distribute the yoghurt further from the kitchen and to more sites.

Friday, Steph and I headed to the kitchen after printing off the sensory evaluation questionnaires. Steph stayed the entire day, but I left because I wasn’t feeling great. Steph was able to get enough people to do the evaluation and I’ll be interested to see the results. I didn’t mind either of the sweet potato or peanut flour samples. It’ll be interesting to see if the locals enjoyed them too.

The weekend I planned to do a lot of catching up, including the blog, but I ended up sleeping quite a bit. We did get out to Tunza for Jan’s birthday on Friday where we ate South African food called Poikie (I’m not sure on the spelling). Basically everything goes into one ‘small’ pot and cooked over the fire.

On Monday the Ivey student Interns arrived along with Emily, another WHE intern; she will be heading to Arusha with Marta to work on the project there. It was fun to take the new interns out through town and do the orientation. I was even surprised by how well I knew the town!