A 19 year old's guide to microfinance in Arusha

So, I said that today’s post would be more focussed around what I actually do as a volunteer here in Arusha, and here I am! This post is probably more aimed at anyone who’s interested in volunteering with the Projects Abroad Microfinance project (this is solely based on Arusha, but it may also apply to the other locations where microfinance projects operate). I’m going to run through a typical day for me as a volunteer here. Nothing too specific; just giving you an idea of the sort of thing you’re in for if you decide to come out here!

So, from waking up onwards! The beds are pretty good. Now, the house I’m staying in is MASSIVE…with an extra capital M...if that’s possible…like maybe a capital, bold, italic, underlined M…like MASSIVE…hahahaha. I’ve talked to a lot of other volunteers, some of whom have seen this house, and compared it to where they’re staying, and they say it’s like a mansion in comparison. So I suspect most of the host families do not have houses this big (this house had 14 or 15 volunteers in it during June and July…most houses have about 4, tops). Everyone I’ve talked to says that the food is pretty good in their houses, and it all sounds pretty similar to what I have here. Although despite this, almost everyone has gone through an adjusting period upon arrival of a couple of days.

After that is heading to the office. It’s pretty easy to get to the PA office from most of the host families’ houses. Some people walk the whole way (like George and I), and some people catch the Dala Dala, but overall most of the journeys take less than an hour (some of the construction volunteers have to travel for an hour and a half on the Dala Dala to get to their placements. You can read more about what the Dala Dala is like here). Elizabeth Makala is the coordinator of the Microfinance Project here in Arusha. Once I’m at the office, the routine stays mostly the same from day to day; people work on their presentations for the day, or they sit around reading and updating the files on the microfinance dropbox and discussing different ideas with each other. Mondays are the only exception to this, where we have a team meeting. This seems to go for about 30 minutes and just roughly covers what people are doing throughout the week in terms of presentations, collections, and business visits.

Now, presentations, collections, and business visits are the three main components of the whole project here in Arusha, and they are all parts of doing “field visits”. Each day of the working week (Monday through Friday), we make two field visits a day (except on Fridays because most of the volunteers are still hungover from social night on Thursday nights…so all of the projects have a half day as far as I’m aware HAHAHHAHA), one in the morning, followed by lunch, and then one in the afternoon.

For each field visit, we get in the car, and drive off to the meeting place with that group; the meetings don’t take place at the Projects Abroad office! Most of the women in the groups everyday are in their 40s or 50s. When we arrive, we set up by sticking posters up for whatever the presentation is that day for that group (there’s no powerpoint projections here so we have to use hand drawn posters!). For instance, the current presentations are:

·         Me – negative numbers, customer relations

·         Yuta – Break-even Point

·         Cleo – Bookkeeping skills

·         Marjolein – The importance of saving money

·         George – Business planning

You don’t really need to be an expert in any of the fields to give the presentation since Elizabeth gives you plenty of notice to read up on the topic and prepare your presentation. When giving the presentation, the language barrier (that most of the women don’t speak English) isn’t really an issue since the Projects Abroad staff (like Elizabeth) simply translate. This means that posters are written in English, and the presentation is delivered in English.

The next part of field visits is the collections and bookkeeping part. Each woman was between one, and three books, depending at how far through the microfinance program she is. The three books that each woman may have, in the order that they are used in the program, are:

1.       Bookkeeping – contains many tables, one week to a page. Each table contains columns for date, money at the beginning of the period (day), business expenses, revenues, profit, personal expenses, overall profit, and money at the end of the period (day). One row of it would look something like this:

Tarehe	Hela Ya Kuanzia	Matumizi Biashara	Mapato	Faida/Hasara	Matumizi Binafsi + Rejesho	Jumla Ya Wiki	Hela Nilizonazo Mwishoni
3/12/17	100,000	40,000	74,000	34,000	5,000	29,000	129,000

This book is kept up-to-date by each woman, and then at the end of each week, volunteers check it for errors and make sure it is being used correct.

2.       Pass Book – This keeps track of each woman’s loan balance and past repayments. We log the date, the amount paid, and the remaining balance of the loan each week. This book is only updated by volunteers and PA staff.

3.       Savings Book – This keeps track of how much money (in Tsh) the woman has saved. The saved money is kept with Projects Abroad. It does not receive interest as far as I have seen, but they can withdraw it when they choose. We log the date, any amount deposited, any amount withdrawn, and the remaining balance of their savings. This book is only updated by volunteers and PA staff.

So, this is the job I’m referring to when I say, “collections and checking books” or something like that!

The final part of field visits is doing business visits! So, this is pretty much as simple as it sounds. A few of us will go with one or two of the women to visit their nearby businesses (often in their houses, which is where they run their businesses from, but not always!). We ask the women questions about their businesses like “how much do you sell each good for?”, “how long does it take you to make each one?”, “how much do the raw materials cost?”, “how many do you sell?”, that sort of thing. The aim is to do two things really. One is to make each woman feel that the project has a vested interest in her business, since it does! Visiting their business and paying attention to the processes they use makes the women feel more connected to Projects Abroad. The second is to understand how the loans are being used. For instance, there is one woman who simply used her first loan to buy some more vegetables to sell. While this is technically an appropriate use, the aim is more for the loans to be used to invest in more capital resources, like for instance, starting a farm in this case, or in a different case it might be building a large chicken coup. This increases the women’s independence from Projects Abroad until eventually, by the end of the last loan, they are each left with a fully functioning, medium-scale business. It’s also just interesting to see the conditions that these women live and work in, and how they differ to Australia and other, more developed countries.

There are other aspects to field visits that sometimes pop up though. Like doing interviews of new group members to determine whether PA is interested in giving them a loan immediately, or whether more training needs to be done first. Additionally, some of the women sometimes ask to be taught non-business-related skills as well, like cooking, songs, anything that is sort of entertaining and can help break the monotony of running their business 24/7!

Lunch can be anywhere really, but it tends to be at the restaurants/cafes around the Nakumatt shopping centre in town, or at the Lenana resort which is virtually next door to the PA office.

Otherwise I think that’s kind of everything that’s involved in a standard day…oh we also have to update spreadsheets that are stored in the shared dropbox folder with each woman’s loan repayments, savings, and weekly business figures (like revenues and expenses) so that there’s a record under their name. Another thing that you might be wondering is internet in Tanzania! There is virtually no wifi…like some resorts have it…some cafes have it…but it’s pretty rare. Instead, Tanzania has a widespread, fairly reliable mobile network with 2G and 3G networks, and most people have smartphones, albeit old ones. The mobile network is bloody cheap as well…like I paid 35,000Tsh (about $10 AUD) for 10GB of data to use within the month. It seems to be how people like to do things here…I get the feeling I might be the same in a few years if the NBN rollout keeps going the way it’s going now…HAHAHAHA

Anyway, I’m off! If you have any questions that I didn’t answer, just comment below and I’ll do my best! See ya in the next one!

Oh very last thing, here's some pictures that Marjolein has taken over the last few days. These are the one's that she sent me because I was in them! Sorry for the low quality...they're over whatsapp hahaha