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.