JAMBO!! Thursday afternoon, Kiratu...an hour up the hill from Mto Wa Mbu, passing two huge transport truck rollovers lying on the side of the road - we have a very good driver in Hamidu...pole pole..slowly slowly....I AM PRETTY ecstatic at the moment _ having tried four other computers at the internet cafe which didn"t connect either to this blogsite or to my sympatico mail>>>this was the last chance> the others have gone to the market to buy 28 pairs of shoes, uniforms and clothing for the 28 kids we have living in Majengo. Of course i can't go, being a white mazunga, the price would gallop like a Masai cow racing down the road less traveled. Am a bit speedy, just to give you a sense of my day so far, woken up by Muslim Call to Prayer at 4:30, seemed to go on all night with the loud speakers shouting out wakening the followers, get up get out of bed, you can lie down forever when you die but right now on your knees...on and on they go, with dark shadows struggling from warm blankets across blackened dirt roads filled with pot holes of water from last night's rain to the Mosque on the main street of town. Ah 4 30...some meditating - my mind racing with the work we are doing here, off and running from the moment my plane set down last Friday afternoon.
My daughter says this blog reads like someone high on LSD, but i can assure you it is from lack of sleep that i speed. Money, and lack thereof. I am in the middle of a big project which requires Tanzanian shillings, lots of them. My debit card, which only worked in one ATM bank last year in the whole of Tanzania it seems...does not work there this year. Instead, and i count my lucky stars, it works in the only traveling mobile bank in the entire district. I climbed all the way up the hill on Monday to this town to discover it gone somewhere else...got smart, and learned the schedule, so most days we spend driving around after this bank, hoping for it to be where it is supposed to be. But this morning, up here in Kiratu, to my dismay, the ATM was out of order. Man..the frustration. And then these computers, but right now at this very moment, my day is going wonderfully well.
\Back in March i read a book on micro financing and became obsessed about putting this incredible concept to work, somewhere in our little village of Wa mbu...Sure enough the opportunity arose with 80 or so mostly women living with HIV AIDS virus who meet in our office weekly....ah ha!! this is the group!! Briefly, we gave them a three day intensive workshop on all forms of small business recording, saving, receipts, locations, clients, and especially all the information around the concept of micro financing: where people who have no collatoral at all can borrow small amounts of money, and pay back weekly, with interest during a period of 6 months.
I knew very little about this concept, after interview each person about their family and health history, dependents, and their small business work: banana selling on the road, chicken raising, egg selling, farming, irrigation, agriculture, retail clothing, etc...we had a pretty good idea of what each person would like to borrow. But had no idea how to do this, how to monitor a project of this magnitude.
OUR STaff at ICA were excited about the project< but it would be a huge undertaking for them< administration wise>
bACK IN Canada after meetings with the head of PLAN CANADA, and many other very well experienced people...and a three day conference on sustainable responsible investment with financial planners, bankers, etc...i learned that for my purposes micro financing would not be a path i could choose. The interest rates demanded by micro finance institutions tend to be very high, and my group of HIV AIDS survivors were very limited in their funds.
Incredibly i learned about VSLAs, from a great guy i met along the way, Village Saving and loan associations..where the groups themselves set themselves up by buying a small amount of shares and pooling their resources, lending the amount out with a 10% INTEREST rate to either members or people on the outside< where they monitor the loans themselves>


BACK IN Mto Wa MBU last saturday morning at a very exciting meeting with the three heads of each of the four groups..after explaining my choice of not going the micro finance route, they explained the details about their VICOBA'S...small banks...much like the above mentioned VSLAs...but in this case, with people so marginalized by the HIV AIDS disease and unable to invest even a small amount, we decided that i would offer them seed money to assist them on their way. My dear uncle, David had given me a portion of the money he had from selling his cottage last year, allowing me the ability to invest in these four groups.
WE asked them how much they needed, so it was their decision as to how much they would borrow. Not ours. \each group is divided into small groups of 5 people who monitor and are responsible for each other. The main group meets weekly, with a rep from our ICA TANZANIA...to tally up the weekly loans and credit. In 6 months they are required to pay back the entire loan without interest.
HENCE WHY i have been trailing the mobile bank daily desperately trying to withdraw the money i have promised them!
They drew straws as to which group would get their loan first. Today i managed to collect enough to assist two of the four groups, with formal presentations scheduled this week, contracts to sign in front of government officials, etc...soda and a big hurrah African style to celebrate.

And Majengo, each day running all the way over there. To spend time with the kids. Teaching English, singing, drawing, writing...dancing....Today, after they collect the 28 pairs of shoes and clothing, footballs and exercise books, pens, pencils, etc....our first orphanage staff meeting with our two cooks, cleaners, teachers, secretary and treasurer to discover together the successes and pitfalls of the last six months....yesterday leaving the office two boys outside, one sobbing into soaked fingers, the other tattle taleing with a story that this boy had run away from home the night before after being beaten by his father, who was drunk and displeased with something he did or didn't do. We brought him back into the office, with a role of TP he blurted out his story< had indeed run away and slept on a nearby porch without the cover of blankets alone overnight. He is ten years old. He is afraid to go home, his 4 brothers and 2 older sisters have all either run away or left to escape the rath of the father. Starving, we bought him some chipatis and a couple of bananas from the women on the side of the road, and headed over to Majengo orphanage where we were scheduled for a meeting> I am sure this boy had no idea what was happening to him. Our cooks cut up some mango and made him tea. Filippe one of my favourite kids with wide ears and a huge toothy grin took him under hand for an adventure with the other kids, by the end of an hour he was laughing and smiling, playing on the swings. |We took him then over to spend the night with a grandmother relative of his, but discovered that by daybreak he had run away from her home, head tailing it down the road, exclaiming to one of our orphanage staff that he would be back soon.

And so it goes.

Election in three weeks in Tanzania, the streets are filled with green and white placards, megaphones on trucks, people dancing and singing in the streets...it is likely that the reigning party will get back in, but the opposition is strong, great arguements and discussions abound.
I have discovered another meal for me, a huge change from the rice, beans, greens and tomatoe sauce i ate every day for two months last year, lunch and dinner. The other night i came across MIrium who owns the Mi Casa restaurant soaking a sort of bun into a small bowl of delicious vegetable soup! You have no idea how excited you can get for a change of taste, and this one is delicious!!

this computer>>>>ALL SET to go back and edit what my fingers have flown through, only to discover that i can't put the curser into the middle, end or beginning of a sentence without deleting the entire paragraph!

We have no idea back home our technology, the ease with which our expectations glide across known terrain...while here it is a celebration to barely connect with the internet!
time..running out...racing to finish without DELETE!!
have a great day...thinking of you all..missing those great kids of mine and my grandkids on this your Thanksgiving weekend...such a long way from home...have a wonderful one!
xx