Deo and I took off on Wednesday 6.8.2014 around noon heading to Muheza with the office car. Even though the road is under construction on many parts we made good progress. Not far before Mombo we had to wait at an traffic accident. One Lorry had bumped into another lorry and they tried to free the driver using an excavator.

We arrived in Muheza before 6 o'clock in the evening checking the hotel we already knew. Unfortunately there was no electricity. But Gideon was ready to show us another new one. It had been a bit outside the town at a quiet place for 15000 Tshper night without breakfast.

The next morning we went straight to the government office (Halmashauri ya ulaya ya Muheza) to get the engineer (Salim Suleman) going up to the Imani mountains. He is working in the building department of the government and has to agree on the building project we plan with our new transmitter site in the Amani mountains.

We passed the Tanesco office, but we could not get someone to mount our meter at Maluvera. But they promised they will mount it as soon as the underground cable is there. They also advised us to request a three phase connection in order not to get a Luku meter we need someone to type in the number every month.

Unfortunately it started to rain heavily when we were on the way up to the Amani research station through the national park, but the road had a hard ground under the muddy surface not to get stuck.

The road within the Maluvera Tea plantation had deep tractor ditches, but we got not stuck ether.

The road leading to Makanya was newly built this year, but the surface has been very slippery and we had to go very slowly not to slide in one of the diches beside the road.

When we arrived at the Maluvera tea factory we greeted the manager and gave him again the letter we wrote him the years passed and could not get an answer from him yet. He promised us to reply it soon.

We started to find the best way for the underground cable to our transmitter site at the transformer of the factory. The path will take a shortcut and follow the normal road later on.

We could measure the length with the car speedometer.

When we arrived at the forest reserve we wanted to take the shortcut through the forest. But the engineer explained us that the forest is very dense and it would take a long time to get the permission to pass it through it if at all, He advised us to follow the road with the cable 2 meters beside it, since this area belongs to the local community even though people use it as fields.

It had been 3.4 km from the transformer up to the bridge at the end of the village. We wanted to continue measuring the rest by tape measure up the hill to the LRC plot.

We walked up and the engineer said he is pretty sure an additional length of cable of 1600 meters will be sufficient. So we have to order 5000m armored earth cable.

As soon as we start to fence the plot of our transmitter site we have to clear it first and level it somehow before we can start to build. The fields around are leveled already and are about a meter lower than our plot.

Unfortunately we had no sight to Tanga due to heavy rain clouds coming up.

The engineer is well known in Makaya since he built the road there and he got cooking bananas to take home for his family.

On the way home he asked us to draw how we would like to build the transmitter hut and where the cable should be buried. But we can order the cable already!

The advantage of putting the cable along the road instead crossing the forest as planned is:

- permission already given verbally

- easy to transport cable there

- easy to dig

-easy to troubleshoot

Disadvantage:

- 1000 metres longer than planned and sponsored

- higher losses and power consumption

Tanesco has promised to connect electricity up to Makanya as soon as enough customers will be available there. But not when