14/May/2011
I woke up and went for a nice long walk to the beach and then jogged the shoreline as the sun rose; In this moment, I feel a joy no word could describe.
I returned to the guesthouse and had breakfast and showered. We had our third Kiswahili lesson from Big Boy and Dao. We learned how to take our sentence structures and turn them into the negative. Instead of "mimi ninapenda Tanzania" which means I like/love Tanzania he taught us how to change the words to say "mimi sipendi Tanzania" which means I do not like/love Tanzania. It was great fun and do not worry... mimi ninapenda Tanzania!! We also learned how to tell time and write/speak the dates. Their time here is crazy! If I were to say come pick me up @ "tano"... tano is 5 so naturally you would think he would come at 5. NOPE! Tano is actually 11 o'clock. haha Its hilarious! Actually, it's slightly complicated, but once you get it, it can be a lot of fun.
After our class we rushed off almost immediately. The term "rush" of course is used loosely as we did not actually rush, but rather... we chose to walk up the street to the bakery because our drivers weren't at our house. We had signed up for a tour with Investours which is by the Mwenge Market. I had no idea what to expect, as I had not read up on this company and was just informed it cost us $35 USD[discounted student rate, normally it is $50 USD] to take the tour.
There was a told of 11 of us interns that went, so we slip into 2 groups and got to give our teams names. To make a funny, the other team called themselves "Angels of the night" lol and our group called ourselves "gypsies". Anyhow, this company does something amazing.
Have you ever heard of micro-financing? Any of you who are in business will know what this is. For those of you who do not, I'll give you a quick rundown. Micro-financing is basically what it says. It is financing, also known as loaning someone money and micro meaning small. So, in other words it is small loans. Most micro-financing has large interest rates and though some of us can afford to pay the interest rates to borrow money, these people out here cannot. Mwenge market is full of entrepreneurs who are trying to make a living off of wood carvings, making and selling jewelry, clothes, little shops, selling peanuts, selling charcoal...etc. These business minded people have no way of upgrading or getting ahead with their business without a loan, but they also cannot afford the interest charges for loans. You have to understand, they people are the poorest of the poor. They live off of less than a dollar a day. So, what investours does, is it offers these people interest free micro loans of about $200 USD and they pay it back in 3 months. This is the amazing part. They take us around in our group to two different business owners requesting a loan and we ask them questions about there family, the work, how much things cost, what they want to do with the loan, etc. After visiting both businesses we as a group choose which one we want to give the loan to. Then, all the money we paid for the tour is then given to them as their loan. We invest our money into their business. It is amazing. I strongly recommend you have a look at their website and consider donating if you can. I have pictures of both women we met.
The first woman we met was a charcoal seller. She had a little 6' X 6' makeshift room at the back of mwenge market made of scrap medal and wood where she sold her charcoal for 2500 a bucket. Her and a friend have been running the business and had received a previous loan and paid it back on time and with no problems. She has 8 kids, 6 grown and 2 are still young and in school. She wanted to get the loan so they could open up a new location by the bus stop which would generate more customers and income.[for those of you who do not know, the most commonly used thing for cooking IS charcoal out here] She was a very kind lady and excited to see us.
After getting some pictures with her we went to lunch at this awesome little place a few places down the row. The women were very friendly and the food was amazing! We have fried bananas with beans and sauce, this delicious tomato salad, and rice with stuff on it. got pictures too!! There was about 50 flies around us the entire time landing on our faces, food, hands, etc but the food was so good I hardly noticed.
Following lunch we went to the second business and met a women who was running a shop for the neighborhood and selling peanuts on the highway at night. She had just one daughter who I believe was 4 years old. We met in her home, a room with a bed and a few chairs where her, her husband and her daughter lived. We squished in there with little room to spare. She has never had a loan before and she needed the money so she could buy a license, allowing her to sell flour, rice, sugar, and other items that would get her more customers. She had a great story! Two years ago she started selling these little bags of peanuts for 100 TSH each and this year in February she had saved enough money to rent this shop and start selling items to the people in the neighborhood. She is doing good with the shop and has been saving 5,000 TSH every day. Every night from 4pm-9:30pm she sits out by the highway with her daughter and sells these peanuts. there were other children from families living in all the other rooms in the house and we got to wave to them and get pictures with them all.
At the end, we returned back to the investours office, choose the peanut lady, took a survey, got given an account on their website to track how the peanut lady was doing with her business and loan payments and then we did a little shopping.
This experience was amazing and I felt so humbled. A family of three renting a room smaller than my bedroom at home to live in. And she sells peanuts and has a tiny shop to provide for her family and try to survive. It felt so good to know that my money was going straight to this woman to help her improve her business.
It is too bad I cannot load these pictures to my blog, because I want you all to see these women and their businesses.
In case you are wondering what happens to the other woman, she is put into the next tour and if by 3 tours she is not chosen they give her the loan out of the organizations grant money, so have no fear... they take care of everyone. Each time someone does not get picked, the people at investours also goes in for a day and talks to them and trains them in how to have better business plans and ways to improve. It is an amazing program and they have investours in Mexico as well, so if any of you take a vacation to Dar es Salaam or Mexico... HIGHLY RECOMMEND YOU GO FOR ONE! It is amazing!
After all that we came home and had dinner. It was such a long day, we were there for hours. We invited another intern who is from Holland out here doing some biology experiments with rice over to our house for a party. We played some awesome games, drank/munched and just chilled out til probably 2 or 3 in the morning.
AWESOME DAY! Sorry this is taking so long. My days are long, really busy and we lose power every night.
Investours Website: http://www.investours.org
I woke up and went for a nice long walk to the beach and then jogged the shoreline as the sun rose; In this moment, I feel a joy no word could describe.
I returned to the guesthouse and had breakfast and showered. We had our third Kiswahili lesson from Big Boy and Dao. We learned how to take our sentence structures and turn them into the negative. Instead of "mimi ninapenda Tanzania" which means I like/love Tanzania he taught us how to change the words to say "mimi sipendi Tanzania" which means I do not like/love Tanzania. It was great fun and do not worry... mimi ninapenda Tanzania!! We also learned how to tell time and write/speak the dates. Their time here is crazy! If I were to say come pick me up @ "tano"... tano is 5 so naturally you would think he would come at 5. NOPE! Tano is actually 11 o'clock. haha Its hilarious! Actually, it's slightly complicated, but once you get it, it can be a lot of fun.
After our class we rushed off almost immediately. The term "rush" of course is used loosely as we did not actually rush, but rather... we chose to walk up the street to the bakery because our drivers weren't at our house. We had signed up for a tour with Investours which is by the Mwenge Market. I had no idea what to expect, as I had not read up on this company and was just informed it cost us $35 USD[discounted student rate, normally it is $50 USD] to take the tour.
There was a told of 11 of us interns that went, so we slip into 2 groups and got to give our teams names. To make a funny, the other team called themselves "Angels of the night" lol and our group called ourselves "gypsies". Anyhow, this company does something amazing.
Have you ever heard of micro-financing? Any of you who are in business will know what this is. For those of you who do not, I'll give you a quick rundown. Micro-financing is basically what it says. It is financing, also known as loaning someone money and micro meaning small. So, in other words it is small loans. Most micro-financing has large interest rates and though some of us can afford to pay the interest rates to borrow money, these people out here cannot. Mwenge market is full of entrepreneurs who are trying to make a living off of wood carvings, making and selling jewelry, clothes, little shops, selling peanuts, selling charcoal...etc. These business minded people have no way of upgrading or getting ahead with their business without a loan, but they also cannot afford the interest charges for loans. You have to understand, they people are the poorest of the poor. They live off of less than a dollar a day. So, what investours does, is it offers these people interest free micro loans of about $200 USD and they pay it back in 3 months. This is the amazing part. They take us around in our group to two different business owners requesting a loan and we ask them questions about there family, the work, how much things cost, what they want to do with the loan, etc. After visiting both businesses we as a group choose which one we want to give the loan to. Then, all the money we paid for the tour is then given to them as their loan. We invest our money into their business. It is amazing. I strongly recommend you have a look at their website and consider donating if you can. I have pictures of both women we met.
The first woman we met was a charcoal seller. She had a little 6' X 6' makeshift room at the back of mwenge market made of scrap medal and wood where she sold her charcoal for 2500 a bucket. Her and a friend have been running the business and had received a previous loan and paid it back on time and with no problems. She has 8 kids, 6 grown and 2 are still young and in school. She wanted to get the loan so they could open up a new location by the bus stop which would generate more customers and income.[for those of you who do not know, the most commonly used thing for cooking IS charcoal out here] She was a very kind lady and excited to see us.
After getting some pictures with her we went to lunch at this awesome little place a few places down the row. The women were very friendly and the food was amazing! We have fried bananas with beans and sauce, this delicious tomato salad, and rice with stuff on it. got pictures too!! There was about 50 flies around us the entire time landing on our faces, food, hands, etc but the food was so good I hardly noticed.
Following lunch we went to the second business and met a women who was running a shop for the neighborhood and selling peanuts on the highway at night. She had just one daughter who I believe was 4 years old. We met in her home, a room with a bed and a few chairs where her, her husband and her daughter lived. We squished in there with little room to spare. She has never had a loan before and she needed the money so she could buy a license, allowing her to sell flour, rice, sugar, and other items that would get her more customers. She had a great story! Two years ago she started selling these little bags of peanuts for 100 TSH each and this year in February she had saved enough money to rent this shop and start selling items to the people in the neighborhood. She is doing good with the shop and has been saving 5,000 TSH every day. Every night from 4pm-9:30pm she sits out by the highway with her daughter and sells these peanuts. there were other children from families living in all the other rooms in the house and we got to wave to them and get pictures with them all.
At the end, we returned back to the investours office, choose the peanut lady, took a survey, got given an account on their website to track how the peanut lady was doing with her business and loan payments and then we did a little shopping.
This experience was amazing and I felt so humbled. A family of three renting a room smaller than my bedroom at home to live in. And she sells peanuts and has a tiny shop to provide for her family and try to survive. It felt so good to know that my money was going straight to this woman to help her improve her business.
It is too bad I cannot load these pictures to my blog, because I want you all to see these women and their businesses.
In case you are wondering what happens to the other woman, she is put into the next tour and if by 3 tours she is not chosen they give her the loan out of the organizations grant money, so have no fear... they take care of everyone. Each time someone does not get picked, the people at investours also goes in for a day and talks to them and trains them in how to have better business plans and ways to improve. It is an amazing program and they have investours in Mexico as well, so if any of you take a vacation to Dar es Salaam or Mexico... HIGHLY RECOMMEND YOU GO FOR ONE! It is amazing!
After all that we came home and had dinner. It was such a long day, we were there for hours. We invited another intern who is from Holland out here doing some biology experiments with rice over to our house for a party. We played some awesome games, drank/munched and just chilled out til probably 2 or 3 in the morning.
AWESOME DAY! Sorry this is taking so long. My days are long, really busy and we lose power every night.
Investours Website: http://www.investours.org
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