Wednesday
was a wee bit stressful, hence the lack of a blog post! Brekky was nice. In
fact, the day started out really well. George left early to go to a Swahili lesson,
so I enjoyed a nice leisurely stroll to the office. I got there, wrote up my
poster for my negative numbers presentation, and was all ready to go for the
day. We piled into a different car that day; instead of a Toyota Noah, it was a
land cruiser…carrying 7 people…SEVEN. It was sooooo cramped. Anyway, we got to
the location for the first group; Upendo B. They never showed up though!
Apparently, this was not the first time this has happened. We waited for a good
10-15 minutes before Elizabeth decided enough was enough, and we headed off. As
we left, I heard her tell the one member of the group that it was “their last
warning”…and after confirming with some of the other volunteers today, it seems
that that group has missed a lot of sessions in the last few months. After that
we headed directly to the second group for the day! In hindsight, I’m surprised
they were ready so early for us. Anyway, they were a really nice group of women,
many of whom were on their last or second last loan! When I asked, they had
been with the microfinance project since 2013! (keep in mind the project only started
in November of 2012) One of the women had brought some of her wares to show us.
She was a tailor who made these beautiful
wraps (essentially), but she also made tailored, pre-wrapped versions of the
wraps for tourists (a suggestion made to her by a previous volunteer I
believe). Marjolein (that’s the correct spelling I learned, and I think she’s actually
59, not whatever I said last time) bought one for 35,000Tsh.
After that
we headed back to the office, which is where the day got stressful. I decided
that I was really set on going back to Ciao, because it really is amazing food.
However, when we got back to the office, George asked if there was any more
work for us to do, and Elizabeth said no. This was the start of a massive
miscommunication between everyone! Hahahaha. So we all decided we’d head back
into the office and update our files and finish up for the day (it was about
1:40pm at this point). After about 10 minutes we were all done and decided to
head off to get lunch and then head home. We were waiting over the road from
the office to catch a Dala Dala into town when Elizabeth pulled up. She was being
dropped back to work by her husband after taking the Land Rover back to him.
She stopped and talked to us for a while. It turns out there was actually
plenty of work to do, and she had expected that we would do it. For instance,
there were two women coming in at 2:30pm to be interviewed (it was about 2pm at
this point). It was all really stressful
and a bit of a cock-up on everyone’s part. Anyway, in the end Elizabeth told us
to go to lunch because it was so late and that she would do the interviews and
finish up for the day…*sigh* oh well at least everyone had moved past it all
today.
George went
back to the office while we went and got Ciao for lunch (I had a chicken,
chilli, avocado wrap and OMGTHEBESTPASSIONFRUITJUICEEVERINTHEWHOLEWORLD.
Seriously next time I’m going to order like 2 or 3 of them since they’re only
like 4000Tsh and they’re so bloody amazing). I headed home at about 4pm. After a
while at home, I checked up on George since it was late, and I figured it’d be
kind of annoying if he had been kidnapped or murdered or something ahahhaha. It
turned out that after he finished at the office, he had gone over to the other
side of town to go to the Maasai market. He walked. A big mistake apparently. He
hadn’t realised how far it was and it turns out it was a very long walk apparently.
He enjoyed it once he got there though. Apparently, it’s very busy and
stressful since everyone is trying to get you to look at their store. He showed
me that he’d bought some bracelets and 2 pairs of beautiful wooden salad
servers. They were really quite amazing. Anyway, that was about it for the day.
We had fish again for dinner, this time with a fork instead of a spoon! And I
managed to pull all the bones out before eating it (I’m not sure if I mentioned
that last time…oh well you can guess what happened).
So! On to Thursday!
I woke up, had some pikelet-type-things for brekky and George headed off early
to the office for another Swahili lesson; his last one! It was Steve’s birthday,
so I left early (at about 8:10) to try and find a cake shop near the
supermarket near our house. Apparently, there is one (says Jillian), but I was unsuccessful at finding it
ahahaha. When I got to the office, Elizabeth told me that Marjolein was doing a
presentation on the importance of saving to both
groups today! And that I would go with them to the morning group and collect the
loan repayments and mark the women’s’ bookkeeping. Meanwhile, all the other
volunteers would go and do a stocktake at one of the women’s businesses over
the other side of town. I was surprised by how few mistakes there were in the
bookkeeping. It was actually really great. Anyway, the meeting was in a tiny
room (again ahahaha) with an alter and some pews. It was like a little makeshift
church out the back of a block full of houses. Marjolein got me to take some
pictures of her while she was doing her presentation using her DSLR camera.
After the little church meeting, Elizabeth, Marjolein and I went on a business
visit to one of the women’s nearby businesses. She sells vegetables out of a
tin shack on the side of the road. The roof has caved in a little bit, making
it a bit difficult to get into the little shop, but overall it was a nice
little stall.
The woman had left her children in charge of the
shop while she came to the PA session.
As you can see, the road is just dirt, with massive
storm water drains on either side. The local shops
get around (or over) these drains by simply using
whatever they can find as makeshift bridges.
We stayed there
for a few minutes and then headed back to where Walter (our driver) had parked
the car. We went back to the office, and then the human rights team (another project
here in Arusha) and I headed out to the Mulberry Café. I had this awesome
burger there! It was so good…but given how the timeline lines up so well, I
suspect it gave me food poisoning…oh well it was still really good. While we
were there it started pouring rain…like tropical levels of rain. I thought it
was hail at first cos it was so loud and the way it bounced off of the cars in
the parking lot, but it wasn’t. One of the girls commented on how funny she finds
African culture with respect to being proactive…and she was totally right. So
we had been able to hear the massive storm and thunder coming towards us for
about half an hour before the rain started, and yet nobody had done anything to
bring the cushions in under the roofed area. As soon as the rain started
though, they all started running around in a panic trying to save them from
getting soaked…even though they already were. Up until this point, they had all
been standing around chatting…so I could see that she was totally right when
she was talking about how most of Tanzanian culture is reactive, not proactive.
After lunch,
Elizabeth came and picked us up and took us to the afternoon group. Since the
other microfinance volunteers (all of us except Marjolein and me) were still
doing the stocktake (non-stop after like 4 hours hahaha poor them). So, I did
the bookkeeping and collections again. I’ll write more about what’s actually
involved in working as part of the microfinance project in the next few days.
Anyway, then
we finished up there and headed home. George found that the only cake was
actually in the supermarket. None of
the staff knew when it had been cooked, but they knew that it wasn’t in the
last few days. It was also 40,000Tsh…which is a lot by Tanzanian standards. So,
we didn’t get Steve a cake in the end (since we also discovered from Mama on
the way there that they had already bought him a cake). After being home for a
short time, we left to go out for the weekly Social Dinner; it was at a place
called Bravo Pizza, on the other side of town. George didn’t want to take a
taxi, so we took the Dala Dala into town and then walked for about half an
hour, almost getting kidnapped twice in the process. Boy that’s an interesting
story…for another time though. The pizza at Bravo was actually surprisingly
good. I got a half and half with Hawaiian and Beef Peri Peri, the half Hawaiian
was really just so I could prove Cleo wrong and show her that pineapple on pizza
IS AMAZING. She didn’t have a comment when she tried it, so I assume that to
mean conceding defeat hahahahahha. After Bravo we headed to the Mulberry Café,
which apparently doubles as a bar at night time. Then, while some of the PA
people headed on to Via Via at about 2am, Lucas, George and I went home.
I didn’t
sleep well at all that night…I had food poisoning. And that’s where Friday went…bedridden
with no energy…I’m lucky that it was a public holiday, so I didn’t miss anything!
And that leads me to today where I’m feeling much better…although bloody hungry
and with a stomach I don’t trust to handle all the food I want to eat
hahahhaha. Anyway! Off to lounge around for the weekend! Maybe I’ll smash out
another Expanse book…who knows…hahaha my family (in Aus) is having roast for
dinner tonight (my least favourite meal of all time I suspect, short of the one
that gave me food poisoning) so I’m pretty glad…hopefully that will satiate
their hunger for roast for a while!
Okay signing
off, see ya later!
No comments:
Post a Comment