So Much Trouble in the World

(Kids from around the Rau Ward. The boy I'm holding is HIV + and its his grandmother we've given the grant to to start her small business. Both his parents have passed away.)

(The Jacaranda trees I spoke of in my last post. This is my favorite part of the bike ride to town.)


(View of Kili from the backyard of the homestay.)







Things are good in Moshi. We've now finished up all the stock purchases for our round 2 grant recipients are are making weekly visits to their place of business. However, the difficult part still lies ahead as we try to reinforce that the profit they earn needs to be re-invested back into the business. It sounds like a simple thing to do but when there's often no food on the table its easy to spend the profits on dinner instead.

I did have an interesting situation come up last week that I'm still not sure how to deal with. One of our original grant recipients, a single woman who is HIV+ with 5 children, was having a difficult time w/ her business the first two months after her initial grant. After partnering with a man who owned a slightly larger shop, her business has slowly started to improve. Both the last volunteer as well as our community volunteers had their suspicions about the relationship but she insisted for two months that the relationship was purely business. After visiting with her again last week, I've come to learn they have now moved in together and are also married. Big surprise! Here's the part I'm having a hard time with. We know for a fact that she has not told her husband about her status. This man has never been married, has no kids, and seems to be a truly nice guy. I realize its none of mine or the community volunteers business to inform the man and thus we have decided not to. The hard part is going to talk to the both of them about her business and knowing she's purposefully putting this mans life in jeopardy. Ironic part about this is that the opposite usually happens here in Africa. Its usually the men who are usually the carriers and the women who are the victims. Our plan is to continue to push for the both of them to get tested and hope there is still a chance he might be negative.

New Digs

Hi all,
I’ve been back in Tanzania a couple weeks now and have been back at work in a new volunteer opportunity in Moshi. Things have been a bit hectic with the move to Moshi, the new home stay, as well as the new job, and thus the reason why I haven’t updated the blog in a little bit. I’m back now and with a new computer in hand so things might be a little easier from here on out. However, with only four months left and spring right around the corner, I’ll be seeing you all in no time.

I’m working with a group called the Moshi Aid and Support for Home Care Activities (MAISHA) which is a program that was started by local doctors, nurses, and clinical workers to provide home based care to people living with HIV or dying of AIDS. My group, Mondo Challenge, has started a small business program with MAISHA to provide financial capital and small business training to a select group of women who either have HIV or are supporting someone living with HIV, and are eager to take on the challenge of running their own business. I must emphasize that the businesses I’m talking about are very small usually consisting of a small shop (Banda) which might sell anything from rice, maize, beans, sugar, salt, oil, or a wrap that most women here wear called a Katanga. However, with the small amount of funding we provide (US $75) most women can only afford to carry a few of the items listed above.

(Andrew - Mondo country manager and me posing with 8 lucky grant recipient's. Every single one of these ladies is HIV +.)

Two days a week my responsibilities are to monitor previously selected grant recipients to see how their businesses are doing and to provide any necessary business or manual assistance where needed. A quick snapshot of my day; With my recently purchased bicycle, I’ll bike three miles to Rau Ward to meet with the MAISHA community volunteers and after a brief conversation about who we’ll be visiting that day, we’ll proceed by foot for another three or four miles to visit possibly four businesses. Since most businesses are located just outside the home (envision shack) of each grant recipient, we must trudge on windy dirt paths, often crossing thru front yards and back yards of other neighbors homes to see our micro entrepreneurs. We then sit down with them to discuss and record what sales have taken place, why the increase or decrease, and propose some new strategies if necessary. Once a month we’ll do a stock take which often doesn’t take long as inventory is low. The bike has been really good and has helped shave about two hours of walking off my schedule each day.

("Happiness" and yes that's her name posing with her newly acquired 60kg bag of rice, 30kg of sugar, and carton of soap. Needless to say Happy Times.)

Once a week I’m work with another ward in Moshi (Pasua) to begin educating those community volunteers about our program. In approximately one month we’ll begin interviewing possible grant recipients for a new round of funding and training. This is always an exciting time as many of these women have no income currently and look forward to the chance of supporting and feeding their children. The tough part is we only have financing and resources for approximately 10 women every round and there are many more then that who want to participate in the program.

(Mama Martha on the left, Mama Agnes - center, and Fatuma sitting down to discuss how Fatuma is doing health wise and what she plans to buy at the market once she gets her grant.)

On another day in the week, I’m providing English and small business training to the volunteers. It is Mondo’s biggest hope that when a western volunteer is not available to be a part of the program, the local community volunteers will be able to continue to run with the program as if we weren’t here. Most of the volunteers we work with speak moderately good English but can often use a little more help with things like adverbs, prepositions, and tenses. I’m by no means an expert and have had to read up on what these things are :) and then the harder part, how to teach it. I often talk too fast for them and use a lot of American slang which often makes for a long day.

The last day of the week is often spent with other development organizations here in Moshi to see how Mondo might be able to partner on any activities related to education, healthcare, HIV, & AIDS.

(Mama Agnes, Mama Martha, and Suzy bargaining over a 30kg bag of Maragi or beans to you and me.)



(Fatuma smiling over her new inventory of 20 Katanga's.)

So, a little bit about Moshi and my home stay. Moshi is about half the size of Arusha, and about 90 minutes drive to the east. Do you notice how I say “how long” rather then “how far?” (If you lived in Africa for any amount of time, you’ll realize that most locals often refer to amount of time to get somewhere rather then distance as the journey is often always beset by tedious amounts of time in the bus station waiting for buses to fill up, break downs, closed roads, etc.) Moshi is located at the base of Kilimanjaro and is mainly made up of people from the Chagga tribe, who insist they are the best business people in Tanzania. That still remains to be seen. Most westerners who come to Moshi are here to climb Kili but with the big rainy season upon us, we probably won’t be getting many of them over the next three months. There are actually quite a few volunteers here but they seem to be younger and often are being transported by a shuttle bus to their jobs and then back to their compounds for food and shelter. It seems a funny way to volunteer but I guess there might be some benefits to it. With my bike, I’ve been able to take evening bike rides (it’s much too hot in the daytime) into the surrounding foothills. When Kili does come out from behind the clouds it is a spectacular sight and often makes my heart skip a beat with the sheer size. The dirt roads are fun to race down and the locals often shout out “Habari”, “Jumbo” or “Mumbo” as I go whizzing by.

The family I live with and the home I’m now fortunate to live in are a far cry from where I was in Moshi. I’ve pretty much moved into the Beverly Hills of Moshi ironically called Shantytown. This is where a lot of the ex-pats live and is made up of rather large houses with big gardens and jacaranda trees lining very street. I still have the squatter but this about 5 times bigger, which gives me lots of leg room to get comfortable however uncomfortable it might be. My home stay also has satellite TV which means 10 channels instead of 2. The news, Premier Leagues, and Champions League soccer is always on which works just fine for me. My Mama is responsible for MAISHA so she is very knowledgeable about the wards, community volunteers, and all the circumstances that surround the women I work with.

Anyway, needless to say, things are going well here. I’m glad to be out of the busy city of Arusha and now living in a smaller town having more personal contact with the people I’m trying to help. It’s an exciting thing to see when we present the up and coming business women with their grants and their first training. I just hope they'll be able to learn a little and carry their businesses forward once we’ve left.

Best to all of you -