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!