Rome wasn't built in a day

Yesterday was my last day at TCBA. I’ve had to cut my 3 month term short by one week as my visa is expiring and to renew it, I have to leave the country then re-enter which will give me another three months stay.

The job at TCBA went fairly well for the most part. I think the computer lessons I've given the staff will probably be my biggest achievement although I had hoped it would have been more for what I did with the clients we serve. I did get out into the field quite a bit to provide advice on stock taking, logistics, marketing, and basic accounting but in the end I just don't know if what I said will ever be used or if they even understood what I was saying. I also put together a well defined strategy for 2007 that focused on growth, sustainability, and efficiency. There were a lot of suggestions and if TCBA takes up just a few of them, I'll be happy.

So after being here three months I've been asking myself what have I learned?

I’ll admit that before I came here I had huge hopes of making a big difference in the lives of the people. I knew it would be difficult and I tried to keep my expectations low although in the back of my mind I couldn't help but have big hopes. During my third day at work after getting a little frustrated for not having power for 3 days, my manager sensed my frustration with how I thought things were progressing and he quickly told me that I needed to set my expectations and standards back about 50 years. I don’t know why I was getting so frustrated as I felt I had prepared myself for dealing with all the issues that normally come in developing countries e.g. lack of electricity, crap roads, crap drivers, Africa time, and lots of traditional thinking that you would never find in the western world. I also pride myself on having a pretty open mind with regards to the world and to the people in it but until you actually come to work and live in a place like this, you never realize the enormous amount of patience necessary to do the smallest of tasks.

So the biggest lesson I’ve learned so far is that in Africa as in any developing nation, change takes time. Coming for 3 months as most volunteers do, or six months as I plan to, or even 7 years which is the amount of time that an American I recently met had been here before giving up, is not enough to see significant change.

I remember a similar situation in Fiji couple years ago when I had shown the same frustration with regards to the state of affairs there. My cousin who was listening to me yammer on about this said something in the way of - “Hey, the people of Fiji just stopped eating each other 100 years ago, how quickly do you expect things to progress!?!” That’s a bit of a harsh example but he was absolutely right. Most African nations gained their independence less the 50 years ago and although Fiji is ahead in many ways there are some similarities. These are developing nations and this developing thing doesn't happen in a day. It takes A LOT of time.

A lot of people will argue that colonial rule and even slavery had a lot to do with the lack of progress Africa has made in comparison to the developing world. While others will say that ruthless and exploitative leaders, tribal conflict, poor education, and AIDS are to blame. I think their all a factor and fear Africa still has a long way to go before they dig themselves out of this mess.

However, please don’t misinterpret the lack of progress with lack of will from the people. For the most part the people I've met work hard from 6AM – 10PM every day of the week. Unfortunately a lot of their time is spent on things we in the western world all take for granted e.g. fetching water, scrubbing floors on their hands and knees, walking everywhere they want to go, preparing the coal stove an hour in advance of cooking, etc, etc. Africa has many of the things we have but here only the rich can afford to have them. In time better education, better government, and foreign investment will eventually lift these nations out of poverty but it all takes time. With that said, we can only do what we’re capable of and if for me it means helping one person at a time and not making as big of an impact as I would have hoped, then that's how it has to be.

So what’s next? Well, I have one more weekend in Arusha and then I’m off to Zambia for a couple weeks. I have an 8 hour bus ride on Monday morning followed by a 40 hour train ride Tuesday. If time permits I’ll make my way to Zimbabwe and Malawi as well. Following that I head to South Africa and the beautiful city of Cape Town.

World Atlas
http://worldatlas.com/webimage/countrys/africa/zm.htm

I’ll spend a couple weeks there then head back to Tanzania to take on another volunteer opportunity in Moshi, a town about one hour away from here. My job there will be to work with health care community volunteers in heading up a grant program for widows and widowers of people that have died of AIDS. The grants are used to expand their business and put their children through school. It’s a similar concept to what TCBA does but this time I’ll be interacting much more closely with the grant recipients.

I'm not sure what sort of Internet access I'll have as I'm traveling and will do my best to keep you all posted.

David.