TZ Winter Amp 10
Day 10: Jan 13, 2025: 3rd Visit to MUST
Written by: John A. Samura
Today marks our last day in Mbeya! We woke up feeling pretty refreshed after a weekend packed with driving and safari fun. We packed our bags and headed down from our apartments to check out and grab some breakfast. The buffet was awesome—stewed chicken, cake, fruits, fish soup, watermelon, pineapple juice, and so much more!
After checking out of our hotel, we headed over to Mbeya University of Science and Technology (MUST) to meet the vice chancellor and chat with some students about their ongoing projects. On the way, we stopped by Livy Cocoa Bar to grab some local Tanzanian chocolate. It’s a cool place started by Naomi’s parents 30 years ago in Mbeya. They focus on making the most of cocoa by creating semi-processed and finished products, plus they train locals on how to make them. Their chocolate is called Mababu, which means "grandfather" in Swahili. They export 98% of their cocoa unprocessed to Europe and India, and they pay almost five times the fair trade price for a kilogram of cocoa to the farmers. As an agriculture trained person knowing exactly the little being paid to farmers for their harvest across the continent and the US, I was glad that someone somewhere is making sure farmers are making a handsome profit from their harvest. As part of their business plan, Livy Cocoa Bar processes some of their cocoa locally into other value added products and exports some. We ended our short trip by buying a few bars of chocolate and taking group photos with the team.
Above: A short stop at Livy’s chocolate factory in Mbeya to get local chocolate bars.
On arriving at MUST, we headed right to the VC's office, made formal introductions of ourselves, talked about our individual programs and projects, and discussed the aim of the trip and our time in Mbeya. He was excited to hear about our projects and stressed the need for international collaborations with the university and to expand the scope of research. We ended our trip by proceeding to hand him and Dr. Eliezer Brown Mwakalapa for being an outstanding host throughout our time in Tanzania some UMD souvenirs, for which the VC said he would “cherish forever.” Lastly, we took group photos with the UMD flag.
After our trip to the VC, Amina and the staff of the food science and nutrition department took us on a tour of the food science laboratory, showing us arrays of equipment used for research and food quality testing, from sieving machines that separate different particle sizes of flour to filtration machines. We were all impressed by how equipped their lab is, and we hope to see more groundbreaking research coming out of MUST. At the end of the tour, we moved to a very interactive product tasting/sensory session with students organized by Amina at the food science and nutrition lab. They tasked us to grade the different products on a scale from 1 to 5, with one being the least favorable and 5 being the highest score.
We got to see very innovative products, from those designed to solve waste management challenges, like using eggshells to address calcium deficiency in the population, to tackling post-harvest loss by adding value to mangoes by designing a 100% plant-based smoothie with strawberry and mango flavors. I was really impressed with the variety of products developed by students to tackle all sort of challenges face by their community.
Above: Strawberry and mango smoothie tasting and scoring the different food quality parameters of the product. In the other photo Amina 2nd from right giving grading instructions to us.
We wrapped up the morning segment of the trip with lunch at the staff canteen.
Our flight out of Mbeya was fun. Eliezer and Amina dropped us off, and we said our goodbyes. They even got us some awesome souvenirs. After checking in and going through a bunch of metal detectors, we finally made it to the waiting area, but our flight was delayed by 40 minutes because the plane was late. When it finally showed up, it was a cool Air Tanzania turbofan plane, and it was my first time flying in one of those! We finally landed in Dar es Salaam about an hour and a half later and were met by our driver Tumayane and Eddie, sent by the hotel to pick us up. We got to the same hotel we stayed at on our arrival in Tanzania, had our dinner, then retired to our rooms and beds to prepare for our flight the next day to the US.
