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!

One more day of work to go!

So, it’s the weekend here once again! And my last one too! Yesterday was a pretty relaxed day. I got up, got ready, and went to the office. I started messing around with reorganising some of the files on the dropbox before we left. Marjolein brought some chocolate from her home country which was…for lack of a better word…really reeeaaaalllllyyyy nice…it’s been too long since I had nice chocolate…or chocolate of any kind really hahahaha. Anyway, we headed off to the morning group after a while. I recorded the loan repayments on our spreadsheet while Cleo handled the books, Yuta wrote the weekly report, Melanie and Marjolein gave presentations on having children out of marriage and saving money, respectively. Diane did nothing but watched. After a bit, Yuta, Diane and I went on a business visit to see…you guessed it! THE FARM NEXT DOOR! Third times the charm, or so they say! When everything was all done, Melanie, Marjolein and I all said our goodbyes! The women sang us a farewell song, and we all took some pictures together…but Cleo’s got those I think…I’ll have to get them from her! I took some of some other stuff though!

After that, we went out to lunch, since it was Melanie’s last day and Cleo’s heading off to Zanzibar over the weekend. We went to the Mulberry…the same place I got food poisoning from last time…luckily, THIS time I didn’t! I got a pretty nice toasted sandwich with chicken, avocado, and something else in it…mayo I think.

They’ve also got a pretty funny sign on the toilets there hahaha

After the Mulberry, we walked for about 5 minutes into town, then split up. Cleo and Yuta went to the central market to buy some vegetables for dinner, while Melanie and I walked over to a butcher to buy some chicken wings. The first thing I noticed when I walked in was how western the butcher was! It was so clean, and all the meat was kept in fridges with glass fronts and everything…just like Australia. It’s the only butcher I’ve seen here where the meat isn’t just hung out on hooks in the open, covered in flies…

After all our shopping adventures, we met up at Africafe for some dessert. It was so good…I’m actually going to miss Africafe…although I suspect my love of Africafe is simply relative to all the other food here hahahahha. I do miss Melbourne’s food, as shallow as it sounds hahaha. After a nice relaxed time there, I said my goodbyes to Melanie and Cleo (I’ll see Yuta again on Monday), and headed off home. Since then (last night), I’ve mainly been working on restructuring the dropbox folders containing all of the women’s groups’ information. It’s a long job…but I’m almost done! Today was a bit of a nothing day…I mostly worked on that…had a sleep…and now I’m going to bed! So, goodnight! My next post will probably be my last post in Tanzania! I can’t believe the month is almost over already!

Anyway, I’m off! See ya in the next one!

Sin day is the best day of the week...I feel sick though hahaha

The last two days have been kind of slow, hence the lack of posts hahahaha. Yesterday was a half day…again…since the Wednesday morning group didn’t show up…AGAIN. Elizabeth is definitely going to drop them next year now, which is a real shame. The lucky thing is, since they are part of a bigger group (their name is Upendo B, and the group came about as a result of the original Upendo group, which meets on Tuesday mornings, growing too large) the remaining members who are still really interested (there’s one woman who shows up each week) can simply move to the Tuesday morning group. So that’s good news! Yesterday morning, I also discovered that Michael (the guy who showed me around town on my first day) actually lives really close to the house where I’m staying. I saw him as I got to the main road to walk to work, and we walked to the office together, which was a pleasant surprise! Other than that, the day went as standard. We went to “afternoon” group at about 10:30 or 11 or so, and that all went pretty smoothly! I did my customer relations presentation for the final time! The women liked it, and they listened very intently actually! Then Marjolein taught them how to make minestrone! That was also the final time that she’ll teach that!

After that, we headed back to the office, and Yuta and I went to Lenana to get some lunch. I figured since it will probably be the last time I’m there, I should take some pictures of what chipsi mayai actually looks like hahahaha.

How it's served

How it's supposed to be eaten hahaha...covered

in tomato sauce and cabbage.

After that I headed home. The night was fairly quiet. I had an afternoon sleep, and then had dinner and went to bed soon after!

That brings me to today! I got to the office (no Michael to walk with) and we left to go the morning group pretty quickly! This is the group that meets in the make-shift church out the back of all of their houses. Yuta is sick today, so Cleo gave his presentation on bookkeeping while I taught Marjolein and Diane how to do the loan collections and bookkeeping. Today was Diane’s first day out on field visits. Anyway, after all of that happened, Marjolein said our farewells to the group, and they told us that we were very welcome to come back any time, and asked us when we would be back again! It was really nice hahaha. Then we headed off!

Soooooo…today…was Thursday…and Thursday…is Cleo and my “sin days”…which means we can eat as much as we physically can and not feel bad about. This is a tradition that started only last Thursday…you know why? AFRICAFE IS WHY! Yeah…we went back there for lunch today HAHAHAHHAA. I was too worried that I would get something that would be underwhelming that I just ended up getting the same sandwich I got last time hahaha. This one:

And I got a chocolate milkshake again! They’re really good milkshakes…and then afterwards, Cleo got pancakes again and I got a slice of Chocolate Fudge Cake, which was, for lack of a better word, AMAZING!

A standard casual picture of my cake

My inner instagrammer unleashed...

The thing is…we really lived up to the meaning of sin day…because after we finished (I didn’t finish the slice of cake and Cleo didn’t finish her pancakes…don’t worry hahaha) we were both sitting there, stuffed to the brim, and both sweating because we’d eaten way too much HAHAHAHHAHAHAH. It was a good lunch.

However, the mood was dampened when the human rights team showed up…Franca and Melany were both in tears when they arrived. They had been at court today, and had waited for 4 hours for their case to come before the judge. So, I’m not sure if I said this last week, but Franca said that the prosecution’s witness last Thursday had answered all of the prosecutor’s questions, but as soon as it was time for the cross examination from the defence, the witness suddenly felt too sick to answer any questions and had to leave. That same day, the judge also told the prosecution that they had absolutely no evidence in this case (it’s against a minor as well…I’m not sure what for though) and that they would never win the case. So…today…apparently after waiting for 4 hours, as soon as the case came up, the prosecution announced that they were dropping the case. Then, as everyone walked out the front door of the court, the kid was rearrested. This is a thing in Tanzania. It has a name, although I’ve forgotten it…basically, the prosecution side of any case can drop the case at any time, and then start the case again from scratch…and infinite amount of times. There’s no limit on it. So basically, the prosecution side of this case can simply keep restarting the case for as long as they like until they find a judge that will rule in their favour. What’s worse is that apparently this was the second or third time that this has happened in this case. There is absolutely no evidence for the prosecution, but they won’t let it go…something to do with the lawyer’s pride they said. What’s worse again is that what this means, since it happened today, is that the boy will spend Christmas and New Years in a prison cell at the local police station, since the next court date is next January…not even in juvie or anything…so he’s in terrible conditions for the next month…I totally understand why they were in tears. It’s so terrible. And I guess it’s these laws, like allowing prosecutors to essentially restart cases whenever they like, that really differentiate more developed countries from countries like Tanzania…it’s terrible.

After that, the rest of the day has been pretty sombre…we did the afternoon group, where Cleo did a presentation on marketing, and I did the bookkeeping while Marjolein and Diane did some interviews. It was a nice visit, but again we were all a bit down. Also, the reason it’s affected them so much is that it’s Franca’s last day, and Melany’s last day tomorrow…so it’s a pretty terrible note to end on. Oh well…that kind of brings me to now. Marjolein’s last day is tomorrow, and she’s going to run a new Dropbox folder template by Elizabeth, and then we can start reworking the Dropbox into a much more understandable and straightforward system. Fingers crossed it all goes well!

Anyway, tonight is social night. We’re going to eat at a place called Safari Bistro which is supposed to have really good pizza, and really good chicken curry! So, I’ll make sure to tell you about it tomorrow!

Oh well I’m gonna go get ready! See ya next time.

My first day of lasts!

Today was a wonderful day. Almost entirely stress free, yummy food, nice people, and overall it made me really happy to be here! (The Tuesday afternoon group has always been my favourite hahaha)

It all started well when I woke up at about 6:30, well ahead of my alarm. It meant I got to relax and wake up calmly without being jolted awake! To add good news to good news, there was POWER! HOW AMAZING! SO, I GOT TO HAVE A SHOWER! WITH HOT WATER! I might sound a little crazy right now, but I really don’t think you understand hahahaha. Anyway, then I had some brekky…which was…I can’t remember…OH THAT’S RIGHT. Just a fried egg hahaha. Other than the shower (which was really amazing), my morning was pretty uneventful. I took a nice, overcrowded Dala Dala to work (this one didn’t even have an extended roof like some of them do, so I was literally bent over at the hips to fit, and yes I had to stand up since all the seats were taken…I don’t think I’ll be able to get a picture of what the inside of a standard Dala Dala looks like, (because it’s a bit unsafe, and probably pretty inconsiderate) so here’s some I found elsewhere on the internet.

At work, I discovered that Cleo was feeling sick today, so she wasn’t coming in. Marjolein wanted to go over to a shop near the office that she’s been frequenting, so it was just me and Yuta…and the human rights people of course. So, it was a nice small group of us heading off to the Tuesday morning group, Upendo A. There were only 3 or 4 women there, since most of the group was off at a funeral! Elizabeth commented that this group seems to have a lot of funerals…apparently last week they were at a funeral too. Anyway, they were really enthusiastic. Melany was giving a presentation on the legal ramifications on having children outside of a marriage in Tanzania. She talked about things like how to go about getting child support from the father, and how the law treats children born outside of a marriage somewhat as second-class citizens…it was really quite amazing. Then Yuta did Cleo’s presentation on bookkeeping, since she was sick! (keep in mind this is the group that meets inside a small room of one of the women’s houses, where we all have to take our shoes off…so it was pretty nice with half the number of people that are usually in there hahahaha) I checked the bookkeeping of some of the women, which was pretty good. Then we all headed outside to take some pictures!

Rachelle dropped Franca, Yuta and me off at Ciao for lunch hahahaha. I honestly love that place so much…although that’s probably the last time I’ll go there :’( oh well…I got a “Pizza Pollo” which was pretty much just chicken, tomato, mozzarella, and I think a little garlic and some seasoning. It was really nice actually…I couldn’t get through it all though! After we ordered (but before our food came), Lena and Siena joined us! It turns out they always go past Nakumatt for lunch, since they’re on the medical project, and the hospital is nearby. So, that was nice! In the end, Franca and Lena ended up finishing my pizza hahahaha. So, I’ll preface this with saying that, when Rachelle dropped us off, I asked her if she would like an ice cream from Ciao when she picked us up, and she said yeah! So, I said “great! I’ll see you when you come get us”…except they didn’t come and get us. In fact, all of us were blissfully unaware of our phones and everything, since we figured that we would just relax until the car came back past to pick us up, since that’s what has always happened before today…like literally every time. At about 1:30, Yuta checked his phone and found a message from Rachelle, asking us to be back at the office by 1:30…We called them and asked what was happening…it turns out no, Rachelle hadn’t meant that she would pick us up…it was just a massive miscommunication…something that seems to happen really frequently here. Anyway, Elizabeth told us to make our way back to the office and she would take us to the Tuesday afternoon group (Ikusura group) separately…so we got on a Dala Dala and headed back to the office. Luckily, we all got seats on this one.

When we finally got back to office, we piled into Elizabeth’s car and headed off to the afternoon group meeting. Since there was an event on at the local church (probably an exorcism to be honest…HAHAHAHAHAHA), we met at Irene’s house (where George, Marjolein, and I all did the batiki making on Monday last week). Everyone was in a really good frame of mind! I got some pictures of their jewellery that had been all laid out, as well as the 3 batikis that we made last week!

The one that I made, the one that Irene made, and the

one that Marjolein made

Melany delivered her presentation on children born outside of marriage:

While Marjolein prepared her cooking lesson:

And then I delivered my presentation on Customer Relations, which, again, was met with some pretty thoughtful questions and a lot of agreement from the women hahaha. It was a pretty relaxed afternoon. Then, as everyone was eating the minestrone that Marjolein had prepared, Franca, Melany and I all said our farewells! They’re a very cheerful group of women, and I suspect the group that I’ll miss the most. When I was saying goodbye, I said something about why I like this group so much in particular (probably something about them being so happy and smiley) and one of the women chirped in, “AND because we speak English so well!”…hahahaha which I guess is pretty true. It really helps when you don’t have to communicate through a translator 100% of the time. (Elizabeth told me that they were particularly sad at me announcing that I was leaving already hahahaha) They insisted on taking some group photos with us all hahahah.

They also let us pick out one of their items of jewellery as a farewell gift hahaha, so I got a necklace made of local wood…then we said our final goodbyes and headed off home. And that pretty much brings me to now…I suspect it’ll be a nice quiet night for me tonight…the power’s still on…OOOOOOO I MIGHT HAVE ANOTHER SHOWER! Who knows?

Hahahahah anyway, thanks for reading and, as always, I’ll see you in the next one!

No lights or sirens is much more scary than lights and sirens

This past weekend was pretty quiet…it just made me miss Australia more to be honest. I didn’t get much done other than I finished modifying some templates for the microfinance project, and had some nice sleeps hahahaha. Today was much the same really! Not much happened!

This morning I got to the office nice and early, in case I had to rewrite my presentation from last week, since it’s not the wisest idea to rely on the fact that your presentation posters will still be around from day to day hahaha. Anyway, it was a pleasant surprise that it was still there! So, I just got to relax and work on redesigning some more templates! I’ve been working on the interview templates that Projects Abroad uses. The issue was that it was all over the place, and different interviews had their answers in different formats and in different places, and it was overall very difficult to understand. So, I redesigned the first interview template last week so that it can’t be edited anywhere except in the designated slots for the women’s answers, unless you deliberately unlock the document in order to edit the questions…I thought it might just be a bit of a waste of time, something to fill in my spare time, but this morning Elizabeth told me that it was so good she wanted me to do the other interview templates like it too! So that’s what I spent my morning doing!

I also discovered this morning (a little bit of backstory here – some of the volunteers went on safari this past weekend, like Yuta and Cleo) that Marjolein went on safari, too, but…like…not with the other Projects Abroad people who went…they only discovered this because when Cleo signed in to one of the parks in the visitor’s book, she noticed that Marjolein’s name was already in there, for THAT day. Apparently throughout the day they saw her a couple of times, and she just said hi and continued on her way. She was on her own with her own safari driver…no one else. And the thing is, she knew that there were other people going, since she told them to have fun on the safari on the weekend! Very strange…oh well!

Um what else happened…not much…then we left to go to the Monday morning group, Aged Sunshine. I got to deliver my presentation on good customer service! Rachelle told me that she liked translating this presentation because it’s simple. There’s no difficult words or anything, it’s just straightforward hahahaha. It was well received! A couple of the women had some questions about specific situations, but nothing too difficult! Then, immediately afterwards, Cleo did a cooking lesson on how to cook an apple cake…which, I won’t lie…was really yummy…I loved it. HAHAHAHA except without an oven to bake it in, we had to make do. The women got a massive metal bowl, put it on top of some hot coals, and covered the top. I didn’t understand why, until they put the bowl containing the cake mix inside the bigger bowl. They had essentially made a tiny oven! It was really clever! But yeah, despite the lack of any measuring implements, the possible lack of clean instruments, and just all-round questionable-ness…it turned out to be delicious and light and fluffy! I wish I’d taken some pictures! I didn’t take many today unfortunately.

So right after the whole cake had been devoured, we all piled into a taxi (not a minivan today, just a standard sedan-sized car, and also not with our regular driver, Walter) and headed back to the office…except we didn’t make it to the office. Out of all the reasons not to make it to the office, I thought it would be the driver’s use of 4^th gear to take off from lights…or the deafening lack of brake pads on the rear brakes…but no…it was plain clothes cops. If you ever get pulled over by plain clothes cops in Tanzania, you’ll understand just how scary it is when you don’t know what’s going on. Cleo and I both noticed when the driver went around a car in the middle of an intersection, but we didn’t think anything of it really. About 100 metres down the road, this black 4WD sped up behind us (I could hear their engine roaring), swerved out, drove past, and swerved back in front of us again, before jamming on their breaks and coming to a screeching stop. The guy in the passenger side then leaned out his window with a tiny (like maybe A8 size…if that’s a thing…it was pocket sized) red book in his hand. Then both guys waved us over to the side of the road, and the driver complied. At this point, Yuta, Cleo and I were all a little worried because we had no idea what was happening, just that two big guys in a black 4WD had ordered us to pull over without giving us a choice (no sirens or lights or anything). The driver took the red book from one of them, and opened it up, and I saw that it said “Inspectore ______” with some name in there, so I thought “I hope these guys are really cops, and at least not too corrupt” hahahahah. Anyway, there was some heated discussion, after which both the cops went back to their car behind us. Rachelle then explained what had happened to us. The driver took off, and I immediately said to Cleo “I’m pretty sure those cops still have his license”…anyway for the next few minutes we didn’t think anything of it and brushed it off…until the black 4WD came up, swerved in front of us again and yelled at the driver! My immediate thought was “Ugh what is it this time”, but I asked Rachelle and she told us that the cops said that they thought our driver had tried to escape! So, I was right! They DID still have his license. (which means he was just an idiot and didn’t realise) They told him to follow them to the police station…at which point I got really worried, since I try to stay out of police stations at the best of times in Australia, let alone in Tanzania, where the police force’s integrity is somewhat questionable…After about 30 seconds of driving, the driver finally stopped to let us out…he was going to take us all the way to police station! Anyway, we walked the rest of the way back to the office which was only like 5 to 10 minutes of walking. So THAT was the eventful part of the day, thank god…

Then we had lunch at Lenana which was uneventful…I didn’t wear my drink this time…which is good! Then we headed back out to the afternoon group, Chem Chem. While Yuta did the bookkeeping and Marjolein did her presentation on saving, Cleo, Rachelle, and I all went on a business visit to Lightness’ business. She sells second-hand clothes. Despite her somewhat irrepressible enthusiasm for clothes (and her constantly trying to sell everything in her store to either Cleo or me), she suffered a lot from tunnel vision in terms of running her business. Her sights were set on the final loan offered by the microfinance (which is 1,000,000Tsh) to allow her to move her business into town. The issue is, her current business is far from good and requires a lot of work first. Additionally, rent for a shop in town is about 400,000Tsh per month, meaning that loan could barely support her for one month once she outfitted the shop and paid rent…so I tried to explain to her that that’s not a good goal for the use of the final loan, but she was very intent on it. I discovered that she used the entire first loan she got (100,000Tsh) to buy ONE pair of shoes to sell…I don’t know what she’s used all the subsequent loans for…but I don’t think it’s capital investment. It was a really quite a shame to see someone so enthusiastic, with such an excellent support structure behind her, but who just couldn’t get how to run a successful business. I’ll get to see her again next week so maybe I can work with Cleo to develop a business plan for her or something…otherwise her shop (which is on a back road somewhere) will definitely die after the final loan is given to her.

Anyway, that was about it. I took some pictures of the miniature field where the Chem Chem group meets!

Otherwise, that was it. I came home…and now I’m just relaxing. There’s power! So, I’m pretty happy. It’s also now only a week until I finish up at Projects Abroad! I’m looking forward to coming home! I can’t wait to see the “Welcome to Melbourne” sign at the airport hahahha.

Anyway, as always, thanks for reading! And I’ll see you next time!

I haven't "goat" any puns for post titles

OMG SO TODAY THERE WAS A GOAT IN MY DALA DALA I KID YOU NOT! I got into a Dala Dala to come back from Ciao (the Italian place…we had lunch there today) and after about 5 minutes, we pulled over. The driver’s assistant opened the back of the van, and ran over the other side of the road to another dala dala, which also had it’s boot open. Mind you, when I say “boot” (a.k.a. the trunk), these vans have the tiniest space between the back seats and the rear hatch. Like the top of the seat touches the hatch, and the only space is created by the slope of the backs of the chairs…which is only very slight as you can imagine…then there’s like a 30cm gap between the bottom of the seats and the floor…so it’s not really a boot…the main reason they’re ever opened is to provide airflow when they’re waiting for more passengers…ANYWAY! There were a couple of guys over the road struggling to fit 3 goats into the back of a Dala Dala! THAT TINY GAP I’VE JUST DESCRIBED! Anyway, the assistant of the Dala Dala I was on, grabbed one of them, and got one of the guys to hop in to our van, and then shoved the goat in the back! I was watching the van over the road struggle with the remaining 2 goats, and I almost didn’t want to watch since every time they went to shut the boot, one of the goats would stick its leg out…but it was all fine in the end! Anyway, for the next five minutes, I just watched these 4 goat hoofs dance around the floor underneath the back seat of the van, until I couldn’t watch it anymore because the van filled up too much.

Anyway, now that that’s out of the way, let’s get back to where I left off in my last post! Thursday! I got to give a presentation…FINALLY! It was on Customer Relations! The group I gave it to was very enthusiastic, and seemed to understand almost everything! At the end, all they had to say was that they could see why I’d said everything I’d said! One of them even told a story about a butcher where she’s seen the points in my lesson in action, and how you really do need to treat customers well! George took these while I was doing it!

Then immediately after that, Marjolein ran a cooking lesson on how to make Minestrone. The women found it pretty interesting, apparently it was pretty tasty, although I didn’t have any since I wasn’t hungry from brekky…I don’t remember what I had hahaha but it was filling.

That went for about half an hour to an hour, and then we headed off back in to Arusha. Since Cleo and Yuta are going on safari this weekend, they wanted to stop at a bank and withdraw a couple hundred dollars to pay for it…which you apparently need your physical passport (not a copy) to do, which they didn’t know…so that didn’t really happen…after which we headed in to the city centre to find a place for lunch. We settled on Africafé, which is this really popular place near the Arusha clocktower that none of us had been to. IT WAS AMAZING. My favourite place so far by a long shot…I’m not really a “take photos of your food” kinda guy…but I thought I should here because I could tell that it was going to be amazing…

So, what this is, is a chicken, mayonnaise, and cheese toasted sandwich…with like celery and cucumber and some other salad-ey stuff in there…It was soooooo good…we’ve all agreed we have to go there again next week…maybe even more than once! I also got a chocolate milkshake…which was really good! AND a chocolate sundae…since I’ve been severely lacking in junk food here…I was so full it was ridiculous…we ALL were HAHAHAHAH.

The afternoon group was fairly uneventful. It was the group (I’m not sure if I’ve talked about this before or not) that meet on the grounds of a church where exorcisms are a regular occurrence. I’m yet to actually hear one in progress, but I’ve been told that the day before I started (so, the Thursday on which I had my orientation around town) there were a few people screaming and “having their demons removed…I hope I can experience an exorcism next Thursday when I go…it sure would be a fun thing to see…as long as I get to keep my own demons HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. Anywayyyyy, Cleo did her presentation on bookkeeping and Marjolein taught the group how to make minestrone.

As you may be able to tell, yesterday was a pictures day…hahahaha. Ummmmm, then we all went home, George finished up his packing, and I helped him zip up his suitcase…I honestly did not know that solid plastic suitcases could stretch and change shape that much…you learn something new everyday I guess! George said his goodbyes and then Gilbert came and picked us up to take us to social night! Since he was running a little late, he figured we’d go and pick Cleo and Melany up before going to Via Via…this was a mistake. What we did not realise was the “Cleo and Melany” had Yuta, Lena, and Siena (a new volunteer) with them. So…the car quickly got pretty packed. George was squashed…Yuta was on my lap…Siena was squashed…Melaney and Lena sat in the boot on top of George’s suitcase, and Cleo got the most comfortable seat in the front…HAHAHAHA such are the road conditions/rules in Tanzania. Via Via was pretty fun! Although, given that it’s usually the place that we go to after social night, it was a bit boring to be there for like 6 or 7 hours. The Karaoke was pretty fun though! I’m surprised I didn’t lose my voice hahahaha…and also! NO FOOD POISONING TODAY WHICH IS BIG IMPROVEMENT OVER THIS TIME LAST WEEK YAY! George left to go to Kilimanjaro airport at about 11:30pm, and the rest of us went home when Gilbert finally got back from the 2 hour round trip at about 2am hahaha.

Today was a bit of a non-event. I noticed that my sleep last night was pretty good (despite it being short). I only JUST realised that it’s because my bed is incredibly creaky…like ridiculously loud if you move even the slightest bit. Now, this doesn’t wake me up, because it’s really only synchronised to my movements, so I must just subconsciously dismiss it…the issue is that I wake up before the bed creaks because I have been worried about waking George up in the middle of the night HAHAHAHA. So, I enjoyed a very restful night’s sleep, not worrying about anyone waking up! Except me…who did wake up on time today. The only group we visited today was the Amani group, who are only about 5 women, but they’re all very nice. Yuta did a presentation on bookkeeping while Cleo and I handled the loan collections. Afterwards we all went on a couple of brief business visits around the surrounding area. The first business, (which I think was run by the chairwoman of the group) was the next-door farm that Yuta and I visited 2 weeks ago. I took some photos of it.

After that, we walked for about 5 minutes to the business of another one of the women in the group, who runs a cake-making business. She makes various sizes of cakes, both to order, and just for everyday sale. They were beautiful! I didn’t get any pictures of them unfortunately! But most of them were square, with white icing all over the outside, and red piping along 3 of the sides, and a crucifix on top, also in icing. From what I gathered, most of her cakes (maybe always, but especially today) are for baptisms and confirmations and other religious events. The third (and final) business visit was to another of the chairwoman’s businesses…although this one was just a water tank that she used to catch rainwater, filter it, and sell it. So it was more of a side business to her small farm.

After we were done at the Amani group, Walter and Rachelle dropped Cleo, Yuta, and me off at the Nakumatt complex where we got Ciao for lunch and said farewell to Rebecca! (a volunteer who’s leaving this weekend).

Then I came home…I’ve just had chipsi mayai for dinner…and I’m winding down for the night. I might go to bed early, since it’s so quiet without George here!

Anyway, thanks for reading! See ya next time!

Fallen Comrades

That title might sound deep…and so was the hole the George literally fell into on our way to work today HAHAHAHHA (he’s fine don’t worry). We were walking to work (the morning was pretty uneventful. There was power when I woke up which was really nice…I’ve grown accustomed to not having electricity (and therefore showers) most mornings), and we were ALMOST there as well! Then I walked along this like…6 inch wide piece of concrete that was between a parked car and a massive dirt drop (like 1.5 metres) into a storm water drain. Well I got through fine…and then like 10 metres down the road I glanced behind me to check that George was still there…and I just saw like half his body climbing up out of the massive ditch HAHAHAAHA. He’d dirtied the leg of his pants and he got a pretty bad scratch on his hand…but other than that he’s fine and still happy! He’s sitting in his bed next to me right now, doing the November monthly report for the microfinance project and listening to music…and probably thinking about how it’s his last night!

Anyway, this morning, when we finally got to the office, after a journey that was a little more eventful than normal, there was this chameleon on the railing outside the office!

Also, this is what the entrance to the office looks like…and yes, that staircase is really bloody steep.

Anyway, when we got in, Elizabeth told us that we wouldn’t be going to the morning group. This is the same group that, last week, didn’t show up. I really don’t understand why we didn’t go…but from what I gathered, it was something about not wasting time going out there since none of them were answering their phones…I dunno it was all a bit weird. That gave us all the morning to work on our various projects though! So, I worked on my presentation for tomorrow, which is about Customer Relations. Fingers crossed it goes well! I measured up a nearby shop’s walls to see the amount of paint they’ll need to paint the shop…so that was fun too!

Then, at about 11am, we all piled into the Land Rover (the one that gets really packed when there’s five people in it) and headed off to the “afternoon” group. EXCEPT! Not all of us were going to the group. Along the way, Elizabeth dropped Rachelle, Cleo, Yuta, and me off to do a business visit! The business we were visiting was this little stall in amongst a massive market. On the way to the business, Cleo and Yuta got hungry so we stopped at “Mini Supermarket” and they both bought some snacks. EVERYTHING WAS SO DUSTY. It’s kind of just the way things are here…with the dirt roads everywhere and all…the woman at the counter just had a rag with her that she would dust everything off with when you bought it. Anyway hahahaha…I don’t think I ever caught the name of the woman who ran the shop. But this is her!

And this is the street she’s on!

Her shop seems like a bit of a jack of all trades kind of thing. She sells cooking oil, kerosene, soap, steel wool, fruit and veges, brooms, charcoal, and MANY other things. It’s a bit of a mishmash. She didn’t actually have anything for us to do for the 2 hours we were there…other than watch her work. We asked her some questions and made some suggestions on how she could improve the shop…her main issue was that her competitors sell the exact same goods as her. The issue is that she seemed to be a bit unwilling/unable to differentiate herself from the two major competitors she had; one over the road and one immediately next door. Anyway…that was a bit of a nothing business visit…it’s a shame.

Then we piled into the car as Elizabeth came back past, and headed back to the office. The rest of the day was pretty quiet…we did some work at the office, had lunch at Lenana again, and Cleo ran a cooking lesson for some women who came into the office. She taught them how to make an apple cake which was really good the other day when she brought it in for us to try…but today…the oven was acting up…it just burned EVERYTHING…But she seemed alright with it…in her words, “it could have gone better but they liked it so that’s the most important thing” hahaha so I’m glad it was a positive experience in the end. After I came home I really did nothing…I read for a bit…OH AND I REDESIGNED THE TIMETABLE THAT THE MICROFINANCE TEAM USES EVERY WEEK SINCE THE ONE WE CURRENTLY USE IS VERGING ON ILLEGIBLE…I’ll stop yelling now…but yeah, I’m pretty proud…I’ll show it to Elizabeth tomorrow hahaha!

Okay I’m off to bed now! It’s George’s last day tomorrow, and he’s just about done packing tonight!

Sorry for the super short post…but nothing really happened today hahaha.

Okay well thanks for reading! I’ll see ya in the next one!

Mandazi, reinvented bookkeeping, and The Gates Foundation...all in a day's work!

G’day mates…wow I miss Aussie slang. Anyway! My day today was relatively straightforward! In fact, I might start posting every two days soon, otherwise everything will be too short to talk about!

Today was a relatively standard day, and yes, that includes all of the twists, turns, and cancelled plans of a “relatively standard day” in Tanzania. I woke up and had a shower! The power was a welcome gift today. For the last few days, the power’s already gone out by the time I get up hahahaha (without the power, the shower is icy cold…by which I mean genuinely the coldest shower I’ve ever felt…). After that I got dressed (at which point George got up and had a shower) and went to have breakfast. Today, brekky was “mandazi”. Mandazi are those donut-ey type things I described before…except I have a name for them now! This is what they look like:

After that we headed off to work. We caught the Dala Dala this morning! YESSSSSSSS. It was so good…not having to walk into the sun for half an hour…ugh. Anywayyyy…once we got to the office, we all grabbed seats and started pottering away at our various jobs…………………………….

…

I did some Christmas shopping…SHHHHHHH don’t tell anyone…HAHAHAHA nah it’s fine it’s that time of year and everyone’s doing bits and pieces here hahahahha. The human rights team got a call saying that the first group of the day wasn’t going to come in for their meeting, so we all had an extended stay in the office for the morning! Everyone was working on their own stuff while George taught a few women English in the next room over. They sounded like they were having fun so that’s good! Meanwhile, Marjolein and I worked on finalising the drafts of an all-encompassing cash book and stock card system. So, as backstory for this…

Late last week, I realised that the bookkeeping system taught by Projects Abroad, (that I detailed in a previous post) has very limited potential. It’s an excellent system for teaching the women the concept of bookkeeping, and developing good bookkeeping habits. However, once women are onto their 8^th loan or so (usually 800,000Tsh), they have invested heavily in many new resources and their businesses are actually medium sized. For instance, one of the women that we visited last week was on her second last loan (which was 900,000Tsh). Her chicken farm had over 1300 chickens. She supplied chicken and eggs to other shops, as well as a few individual people…but mostly shops. Her business is clearly well-developed. So, it made me wonder about the retail-shop-equivalent of her business. They must have a very difficult time keeping track of all of their transactions and stock! This led me to talking to Elizabeth about whether the development of a more advanced bookkeeping system would be useful, and she said yes! So, I got to work on a draft of a cash journal and stock card system over the weekend! Today it’s all finished. So! After talking to George and Marjolein, who had also been working on stock-recording systems of their own, we discussed the merits of each one for a bit (just before George had to teach his class). Anyway, the long and short of it is, we’re using my cash book draft, with some minor modifications and simplifications of headings and stuff, and we’re using Marjolein’s stock keeping system, which was actually really interesting and very effective. I’ll show you some screenshots, so you can see what they look like!

So, the cash journal is pretty self-explanatory, but the stock card requires a bit of explanation. Each line is a particular product offered by the business (there usually aren’t that many…maybe 60 or so), then there’s the price that was paid for each good, the price that they’re usually sold at, and the number that the business has at the start of the sheet. Across the sheet, each day, the woman writes the number on hand at the start of the day, then keeps a tally (in a scores of 5 type of thing) immediately under that number (in the same cell). Then the next cell across is the next day, and she deducts the tallied amount from the amount on hand at the start of the previous day. It’s really simple, and allows for quick recording of transactions in-between customers.

Elizabeth was beaming when I explained it all to her. Especially when I talked about how in the more advanced groups, the current bookkeeping system can only carry their businesses so far, so this new system of stock-keeping and the cash journal should be taught to them at around the 8^th loan. There are 2 or 3 groups who are actually at that stage right now, so we might teach it to them before I leave!

After that was lunch over at Lenana again. I had chipsi mayai again…ugh it’s such good chipsi mayai there. I got a piece of chapati too…everyone thought I was gonna be so fat…but I didn’t actually want to eat it all! I just wanted to try the chapati here, and also have my chipsi mayai…so it was really good! Don’t worry…I didn’t eat it all hahahaha.

Then that afternoon we headed off to the Ikusura group. Marjolein gave her presentation on saving while I did the collections and marked their bookkeeping, and everyone else headed off to do a business visit. After Elizabeth, Marjolein and I were done, we went and joined the others at the business. It was amazing. This woman had a pretty big plot of land, with her house, some beehives, some livestock, and a woodchopping area. Then, out the back, on another plot of land was this MASSIVE garden. It was on an even bigger block than her house! It was like a jungle, the only difference being that she knew all of the plants in there. There were some various plants with medical uses, some for makeups, some for tea, some for cooking. It was truly amazing. The MOST impressive part however, was that some time recently (I couldn’t quite nail when, but I think it was in the last few weeks), some sort of President of some sort of organic foods thing in Italy…again it was difficult to nail exactly who and when because of the language barrier…but it seemed like it had been a massive deal. She also was a guest speaker at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in July last year, and spoke about development in Africa! So, she seemed like a very influential woman in the area! It was a shame I missed most of the business visit! I would’ve liked to have heard the whole story! But I had to scrape together what I could in about 5 minutes!

After that I headed home. George went to the Central Market to buy some jumpers with the Tanzanian flag on them for him and his family. They seemed a bit on the steep side…22,000Tsh each…but he talked them down to 50,000Tsh for three. So that brings me to now…when not much is happening and I’m listening to some Big Shaq and Bag Raiders while writing this post…HAHAHAHA

Here’s some pictures I took of the Ikusura group while we were waiting for the human rights group to finish their presentation!

That's me, Rachelle, and Yuta

As always, I’ll see ya next time!

Bring a hole-punch with you to Africa

You wanna know why? Because as an unexpected side effect of my recent food poisoning, I lost a bunch of weight clearly (there’s no scales here so I don’t know how much…but you can see it in my face so it’s probably at least a kilo…). This means that I spent the whole day today pulling my pants up because my belt is now too big HAHAHAHAHA. So, the first thing I did when I got home was put a new hole in my belt…which was difficult to say the least…all I had at my disposal was a pen, the metal rod thing on the actual belt, and a pair of nail clippers…anyway it worked so I’m happier now.

So, today. Today was…well…long…and a little bit tedious. When George and I got to the office, Elizabeth greeted us and started the rundown of the weekly schedule…although she’d forgotten her laptop…and she hadn’t uploaded the updated schedule to the dropbox yet…so she did it from memory! We all listened intensely but it was too much information…and she stopped after Tuesday afternoon HHAHAHA and we all agreed that we’d just look at it when she got home and uploaded it to the dropbox, which she’s now done!

Anyway, my whole day was basically one long business visit…not “basically”, it actually just was one big, long business visit. Marjolein, George, Rachelle, and I all left the office at about 9:20 (so early right!?!?!?! hahahahaha), walked out the front of the office, and hopped on a relatively empty Dala Dala (we did have to wait for about 5 minutes for one that wasn’t totally packed). We all took our seats in the van, and prepared for our overly cramped, sweaty, hot, 25-minute journey on the Dala Dala (again, read my post that talks about Dala Dalas if you don’t remember it). When we got off (and stretched for a few minutes…and let my kneecaps recover from being pushed up against the seat in front of me) we walked for about another 10-15 minutes before we finally got to Irene’s house. She invited us in through the front gates, up a footpath, and along a short but seemingly invisible path through some trees and fronds to a long wooden table.

Her business, as we soon discovered, was making batikis, which are kind of like wrap dresses…but ones that you literally wrap around you…not the first-world, pre-sewn equivalent hahahah. The process was actually kind of interesting. She takes a plain coloured fabric (the three that she had today were white, white, and beige), then uses these sponge stamps to stamp patterns onto the sheet using melted wax. The wax then dries, and she soaks the fabric in a dye for 35 minutes, with a brick on top. After that, she pulls the fabric out of the dye, washes it out, and hangs it in the sun to dry. Since the dye can only affect the exposed fabric, you’re left with the pattern in the base colour (this time white/beige), and the rest of the fabric in colour. She repeats this process with various designs and dyes to create these beautiful final products that she sells for 25,000Tsh each (they cost 18,000Tsh to make). Irene was really a very nice woman, she included us a lot in the process, even letting us stamp the 3 fabrics most of the time! Despite that, stamping was a one-person job…so most of us sat around vaguely watching, but also having to entertain ourselves with various activities throughout the day. We made a list of suggestions for her business, as well as providing her with some possible advertising outlets. Here, have some pictures so you can better understand what I’m talking about:

The sponges used to stamp out each pattern.

The pot containing the wax, held over a bowl of hot coals.

George stamping out a pattern over the top of one that we had already done.

A couple of the fabrics we worked on today!

And Marjolein in the background working on one of them.

Irene had quite a beautiful garden too!

After that, Rachelle walked us back out to the main road where we got on a Dala Dala back towards Arusha. She didn’t come back with us since she lived within a few minutes’ walk of where we were for the whole day hahahaha. The trip back was…exciting…to say something of it. So I was sitting in the very back row, in the left corner. There was nice ventilation, since the windows were open…and I was kind of forced to have half my arm and shoulder outside of the van…which really didn’t fill me with confidence, so I tried my best to keep it inside the van…Oh well. The driver never slowed down for speed bumps in the main road…which are very tall…and are about every 500-1000 metres…so I was almost thrown against the roof a couple of times…which is very high up…like you can stand about 2 thirds tall in these vans…so there was about 1 and a half feet between me and the roof…yeah that was interesting. Then! The van stalled after taking off from picking up some passengers…that should usually be a small thing, right? Wrong…the van had a flat battery…I could hear the motor struggling to turn over about 30 times before they abandoned it… So, they got a couple of men out of the van in an effort to push the van into a rolling start. It worked! But the engine stopped again after a few seconds of waiting for the men to get back on board…So they shepherded everyone out of the van and onto the side of road, by which point there were plenty of vehicles almost rear-ending the van…at speed, too…It was still occupying one of the two lanes of traffic. After a minute or two, this larger bus pulled up behind us and took us all in. It was much more spacious than the Dala Dala, and only 500Tsh instead of 400Tsh! The only area it was lacking in space? They had covered the entire ground of the bus in boxes containing ten 720g packs of liquid soap each…this wasn’t that much of an issue though since it was quite literally the WHOLE floor. So you just walked on them to get to a seat…and then had your knees tucked up a little higher than they otherwise would be…it was still a hell of a lot more comfortable than any Dala Dala I’ve been on…I’ll keep an eye out for those buses in future! They seem to run the same routes as the Dala Dala vans. Anyway, after that, the trip home was fairly uneventful…got off at the Mianzini stop, got on another Dala on the other side of the intersection, and got off again at Sakina Supermarket (you can look all of these places up on Google Maps), and walked home.

So that brings me to right now…where there’s no power, so it’s dark, and I’m lying on one of the couches in the downstairs living room (yes there’s and upstairs living room too hahaha) with a candle next to me, listening to songs that make me not miss home as much…tomorrow is the half way point! And I get to finally do my negative numbers presentation on Wednesday! Provided the morning group rocks up this week! Fingers Crossed!

Alright well, as always, thanks for reading! See ya in the next one!