Getting ready to leave!

The day has finally come! I’m almost entirely packed! (just waiting for some stuff to dry out after my shower this morning) So, this last post will be a little less about what I did yesterday, and a little more about what I’m going to miss.

That said, yesterday was a pretty good last day! I woke up, had a muffin for brekky! Then got dressed, and headed off to work. The trip went smoothly, which I’m pretty glad about. Overall, throughout my whole month here, I haven’t fallen over while walking anywhere! Not even once! Like…that might not seem like a massive feat, but given the roads here, it kind of is. Anyway, at the office, I did an interview with a woman who’s a part of the Friday morning group, and gave her her fourth loan of 400,000Tsh. So that was pretty fulfilling! Then, we headed off to the Monday morning group. I FINALLY GOT TO GIVE MY PRESENTATION ON NEGATIVE NUMBERS!!! It went really well! And the women loved the component of it where I talked about how the concept actually applies to their bookkeeping and stuff like that. They liked it so much, they asked me to leave the poster with them so that they had a record of it! After that we went to see two women’s businesses, the first of which currently just sells ice creams every so often. She used to have a business with over a thousand chickens that she sold for meat, and she used all the proceeds from the business to pay the hospital bills for her husband. He was sick for 10 years before passing away in September this year. Then, after his death, she had to sell the whole stock (all 1000 chickens) to pay off the remaining bills. So now, all she can afford to do is sell ice creams since the chicken coups have fallen into such disrepair. She needs a loan to be able to repair them. The second woman’s business was selling fried bananas. She makes about 7,000Tsh per day in profit. I asked if the business was seasonal, since bananas are a pretty seasonal fruit here, and she said yes, but she switches over to selling chips in the off-times. I thought this was so clever because it uses all the same equipment, same oils, same wrapping and everything. She struck me as a pretty clever woman.

Then we headed back to the car, and we went to Ciao for lunch! I did a little bit of shopping to use up the last of my money here. The afternoon group was pretty relaxed, I did the loan collections while Yuta did a presentation on bookkeeping, and Diane went on a business visit. I watched an exorcism take place. It was…exciting…I guess…It was very strange. I felt really bad for the girl “having her demons removed”. No wonder she was crying. That’s one of the things I will miss the least about Tanzania; the blind following of religion, and, in particular, whatever priests say. Priests are apparently the only people who have a say about whether or not you have “demons” in you, and then you need to be exorcised. I will also definitely not miss the power outages hahahaha. I’m looking forward to getting home to my shower too…

The things that I WILL miss though are also plentiful. Mainly the people. It’s been wonderful to work with the other volunteers on the project, as well as the staff. They’ve all been very welcoming of me and just overall wonderful people! The women in the groups are also amazing, especially in the groups who have progressed further. It’s amazing to see some of the businesses that these women have cultivated from next to nothing, into a business that can single-handedly support their whole family. The culture here is also really wonderful. Everyone is very friendly, and the general attitude towards everything is to laugh about it, rather than become angry. While this is nice, I suspect it (as well as the relaxed attitude towards punctuality) is what actually limits the economic growth of the country.

Overall, I’m really glad I came here to work on the project. I’d highly recommend it to anyone who’s looking for experience working with start-up small businesses, or who’s just looking to help make the world a better place by using their skill-set. I wouldn’t recommend this to anyone who doesn’t cope well with food they don’t like…cos there’ll be a lot of that…HAHAHAHHA.

Anyway, I’m gonna go and keep getting ready to leave! Only another 4 hours til I get picked up!

My next post (if there is one) will be from a different country! Stay safe everyone!