Mwanza

I am looking at the present.

The cobblestone road technology is spreading through the municipality, a shift started after a benchmark tour of Mwanza.

The council directors are sensitizing residents now, preparing for construction in the hilly wards.

It is a sign of change, however slow.

After coffee, I walk down toward the town center, past the new cobblestone roads that have been causing so much talk lately.

The council directors told residents to expect changes after their benchmark tour of Mwanza, and now the hills of Iringa are being paved with stone.

It is slow work, pole pole, as we say.

The dust that usually coats everything in September is gone, replaced by the smooth, gray stones that will eventually make walking easier in the rains.

Yes, very much.

For instance, I don't want to get too geeky too early, but I did set up services at the internet exchange when it was already running so at the internet exchange in Dar es Salaam I was setting up services while I was actually in an office in Mwanza at Lake Victoria so over two satellite hops I was you know configuring something and it didn't work out somebody had to go and reset so I had to send my wife hey press that button

drive there and press that button yeah Was this at Poster?

Yes, from the beginning.

There were men in hard hats and high visibility vests directing traffic around a section of Mkwawa Road where the asphalt had been ripped up.

They are moving to cobblestone technology, apparently after a benchmark tour of Mwanza earlier this month.

The council directors have been told to start sensitizing residents before construction spreads to the hilly wards of Kelilo and Mufindi.

It feels like a quiet revolution in infrastructure happening right here in the Southern Highlands.

For years, Iringa's hilly wards have been paved with asphalt, but apparently, starting late August, the council has begun a pilot project to lay cobblestones in the municipality.

I am told they took a benchmark tour of Mwanza and are now sensitizing residents in Gangilanga, Ahindini, Cololo, and Mifindi districts before the full construction starts.

Walking down the slope toward the CBD, I could see the early signs, sections of road where the blacktop has been stripped away and replaced with those rough, uneven stones that clatter under bicycle tires and Dalla Dalla wheels.

It looks old-world, almost European, fitting for a town with so much German-era architecture still standing tall along Uhuru Road.

Okay, so I was born in a country called Tanzania.

I live in a small town called Mwanza, and I've been a personal and a church translator for a lot of people from different countries.

And so I met my husband in the process and we started dating and I ended up here.

And we started a family and after that I'm like, what am I waiting for? So I should just start the process and become a citizen.

So scaling to me is very important, but it can only work and it will probably only sustain if it really understands the local approaches that are needed.

The tools, maybe they can be adapted, you know, a tree that we're growing in Mbale, maybe different from a tree we're growing in Kisumu or in Mwanza in Tanzania.

It's the same approach, but it has to be tailored for what's going on to that local market.

And I do mean market there because ultimately this is about who are we selling it to, right? Are they selling it at their local market? Are they selling it and trying to get it to Kisumu or to Nairobi? Are they trying to get those avocados to Dubai where there's a massive marketplace? And then more recently, we're doing carbon as a new crop.