My older sister is getting married today (yaay!) Because of her wedding, I decided to shorten my time in Tanzania by a month. I got on a plane a few days ago and am now back in the US and am celebrating the addition of a brother to my family. This blog and thoughts about my journey will continue to be active for a little while longer, but I wanted to let you guys know that by the time this post goes up, I will be back in the USA.
written 5/27
I recently went to visit Mama Mary, a woman who lives in Tabora that I am fond of but don’t spend much time with. She welcomed me into her home, finished chatting with another woman who was there and then excused herself to begin cooking. She had recently returned from a day at the farm and so I knew preparing dinner was important. I waited in her living room while she cooked.
Awhile later she came out to grab some fish to add to the meal. She asked me if I ate fish. I told her that I didn’t, but she should cook it anyway because I was going to go home and cook my own dinner later. She then told me she wanted me to stay and eat at her house. When I protested she reminded me that here you serve guests food, so I relented and let her cook for me. When she returned, she was bearing an individual-sized portion of ugali and greens (no fish.) I was a bit sad as I had thought she was cooking for her family and didn’t realize she had been cooking just for me.
I sat down to eat and she ran off to being cooking food for her family. Although I had come to spend time with her, she had just cooked me food so I resigned myself to eating it in the living room instead of going into the kitchen and spending time with her. After I was done eating I would try to spend time with her.
While I was eating her husband came home and they began chatting. When I finished my meal I stood up and tried to join them. However, they thanked me for coming and told me that we would see each other later.
I left disappointed. Although Mama Mary had been very kind and had been a gracious host, all I wanted to do was spend some time with her and I barely spoke to her the whole time.
My understanding of the role of a host is that you try to make your guests have the best time possible. Her understanding of the role of a host is that you make sure you get as much food in them as possible. These two aren’t always at odds, but in this visit they were. If you live in a place with very little food, feeding someone can be the greatest kindness you can show them. Although I understand the root of this difference, I couldn’t help but feel disappointed. I feel that way about many of the cultural differences here- although I have come to understand many of them, I still feel more comfortable and fulfilled by the practices I grew up with.
written 5/27
When I tell people about the group we’ve started, one of the common questions I get is- but you know nothing about business, what makes you qualified to do this?
The answer is that, although I’m no business expert, I know some basic financial principles that are new to some of our women. By teaching them these skills we are giving them valuable tools with which to make money that they can use for the rest of their lives.
A few illustrative examples:
I’ve done a bit of shopping around in order to learn where we can get our ingredients for the lowest price. While talking to a woman who runs a shop here I learned that the price/liter of oil is Tsh2200. She buys large containers of oil and then sells small amounts to the people who come to the store. I asked her how much oil she buys at a time and for what price. She told me she buys a 22L container for Tsh50,000. I did the math and discovered that she is selling her oil for a loss- she only receives Tsh44,000 when she sells 20L. The idea of knowing your costs and making sure that the money you bring in is more than your costs is an idea that not everyone in town understands. We have been putting in a lot of work to track our costs with the women so that we can learn what our profit margin is. Before July we will host a training in which we help explain to them the importance of making sure you are earning a profit.
We did not sell all of our chips in a week. We asked the women what we should do with the bags and they responded that the women in the group would buy the chips. We then explained to them that if they buy the chips they are not earning any money. Paying yourself out of your own pocket does means you have not earned anything.
Hopefully by the time we leave they will have a grasp of being able to calculate your costs, your profits, think about saving money to make bigger purchases, and buying in bulk when it is cheaper. The PCs that replace us will continue furthering their business acumen and help them make and carry out contracts with buyers and begin to work on marketing themselves and their products.
written 5/27
As the year comes to a close and we are beginning to take stock of what we have achieved and get everything ready for our departure, it is time to thank the people that helped to make this happen. I would like to send a huge thank-you to all of my donors, without whom, this year and journey could not have been possible. I received donations and support from over 75 individuals, families, and institutions. Together you contributed $8391 and have kept me going throughout this year.
You have funded an eye-opening experience for me in which I have learned about the world, about myself, and I will return to the US much better for having been here. You have funded the beginning of a women’s group that has taken its first steps on the road to financial stability and food security. You have shown this group of women that they are so much more than provincial farmers, they are women whose lives and stories touch the people around the world who read them, who’s troubles matter to people in the wealthiest country in the world, and that they have the capability to change their lives for the better. Your money has made a difference and will have a lasting impact. Thank you.
If you would like your name removed or changed, please let me know. I also have sent out thank-you letters to everyone who donated money. If you have not received on, please let me know as the mail here can sometimes be a bit unreliable, and I can send you another.
Adele and Malcolm Hast
Alexis Broch
Alice Sharp
Angelina Cardona
Angie Sledge
Ann Meerdink
Annette Kindred
Annie Agard
Annie Johnstone
Arianna Asercion
Aurelia Heitz
The Ballard Family
Ben Goldsmith
Benamy Yashar
Beth Eng and Family
Bradford Nguyen
Carol and Richard Holdstock
Casandra Crain and Alpine Ranch
Cathy Trainer
The Center of Evolving Consciousness
Charlene Palmtag
Chris Thorman
Christoph Neyer
Claude Stanley Fowler
Corby Shands
Daniel Hersh and Family
Daniel Virtheim
David and Melanie Courchaine
David Brown and Arlene Immerman
David Hast and Family
David Rodriguez
David Zimmerman
Debra Willis
Dianna Dumelle
Dongyi Wu
Ellen Eagan
Ethel Elkin
The Fixler Family
Georgia Andrews
Gerald and Beverly Praver
The Gorrin Family
Graham Waldo
Grandma
Jack Rossetti
Jairo Avalos
Janet Chikofsky
Jeremy Ragent
JooHee Ahn
Josh Freedman
Joshua Anon
Kevin Meyer
Leander Love-Anderegg
Lee Siegel and Family
Malcolm and Judy
Margaret Strong
Margot Manburg
Marti Hatcher
Marvin Sternberg
Mary Mulvehill
Michael and Katie Riemer
Nancy Schimmel
Nicholas McIntyre
Perry Bloom
Rachael Gass
Rory Solomon
Ros Meerdink
Ruthie Arbeiter
Ryan Neal
Sarah Guerrero
Sarrah Abidali
Shelby Solomon
Stacy Villalobos
Steven Crane
Susan Gere
Suzanne Singman
Taryn Sumabat
Terry Solomon
Wade Wells
The Wagner Family
Will Wheeler
Xue Feng
Zubair Ahmed
Zahra Sayyid
written 5/13
One of the most uncomfortable elements of my relationships with Taborans is the fact that people constantly ask me for things. African Friends and Money Matters, a book in our 2Seeds library, discusses this in great detail. It says that people in many African cultures see wealth inequality in a very different way than we do. It is expected that those who have more will give their wealth away to those who have less. This way everyone is taken care of and if you ever encounter hard times, you have many friends that you have helped out over the years that you can ask for help from.
Unfortunately for us, this assumes that people’s relative income values will fluctuate and that people live in the same community for a long time. Being outsiders who come for a brief amount of time (and who will never need to ask for money from people in Tabora), this reciprocity will never apply to us. This means that part of our life includes constantly being asked for gifts and donations and things in a way that will never work in our favor.
This continually makes me uncomfortable that people just want me to give them things and that I must reject them and, in return, reject social norms here. I never quite know how to deal with it and have ended many conversations in which I say ‘maybe later?’ and then scoot away as people laugh at me and call me greedy. There are people that have tried to become friends with me, but I don’t visit them because all they do is ask me for things, so spending time with them is incredibly unenjoyable for me.
Additionally, giving gifts to others here can be a basis of friendship. I’ve only very recently gotten to the point with people where I feel like giving them presents because of the strength of our friendship, but I have been asked to prove my friendship to others since the moment I got here by giving things away. I do like giving presents, but I want to give them when I choose, not just when other people ask. It’s hard for me to feel that a friendship can be based on me giving many things away and the other person only taking. I need either an exchange of goods or an emotional bond in order to feel fulfilled.
written 5/10
On Sunday we had our first cooking-with-the-intent-of-selling meeting. It was a little messy on our end because we woke up in Korogwe and it was raining and Ashley had to return in the evening. This meant that Ashley arrived at the start time for the meeting and then I tag-teamed in (late because of the rain) and she headed back into town.
The women gathered belatedly, Ashley brought out the supplies and we began to cook. The women expertly peeled the potatoes and washed them. Marc, one of the PCs in Lutindi, had a mandolin slicer sent to him last year. I’d never heard of this kitchen implement, but it’s an incredibly effective thin slicer. The women tried it out last time we cooked and really liked it. It makes much more consistent slices than they can with a knife alone or a veggie peeler. We had Ana buy another one for us in the US. They took turns trying to figure out how to use it well.
We then fired up the stove (aka three stones to place the pan on with sticks put in the gaps) and added oil to the pan. We placed portions of the potatoes in the oil and one woman manned the chips while the rest sat and chatted.
I brought out some packs of chips that we had cooked the first time and asked them to look at them. One package had soft chips that were molding and one package was still crispy. We didn’t know if the different was the quality of the seal on the packaging or if the chips were still hot when they were packaged and so they condensated and began to mold (do any of you guys know?). The women decided that we should wait until the next day before packaging the chips. They all assured me they would return the next day.
So the following day I waited around for anyone to show up to package them. No one came. It was raining all day so there was lots of water in the air and the chips lost their crispness. I began mentally planning the meeting the following Sunday in which I would have to tell the women we made no money because no one packaged the ships and they spoiled.
However, the next day all of the women showed up. I was impressed that they had managed to organize themselves without any prompting from me. This gives me a lot of hope that the group will continue to work even while we’re gone. I made all of them try the non-crisp chips first and asked them if they were worth packaging. The women said they were (I wouldn’t have bought them) and we commenced packaging. We ended up packaging 45 bags before we ran out of bags and sent them off to Mama Aggie’s shop to sell during the week.
Next week: profits!
written 5/24
In this year I have left behind everything I have ever known. I have left behind all of the people, the language, the environment, and the social rules and structure I have spent my life learning to make the best of. The only real similarity between my life before I came here and now is that I am the one who is living it.
This has allowed me to gain a deeper understanding of the stuff that I am made of and to parse out what is truly me and what is me as shaped by my environment. I have often felt like I am not myself here, and much of that is because I am lacking the environment I am used to. I am not as kind or as funny or as beloved here as I think of myself as being. I come from a place in which things come easily to me and here they do not. This has made me feel very out of sorts and I have spent a lot of time wrestling with my self-conception and how that is or is not reflected in my actions here. Here are a number of areas in which I’ve been struggling with this this year and some of the realizations I’ve come to about myself.
I think of myself as making friends easily, but we are approaching the end of the year and I still find myself feeling very lonely. Much of this is because the structure of this program means that the vast majority of PC interactions happen in a group of 14. This means that we only get to see the side of each other that comes out when we are in a large group environment. I need more one-on-one time to really connect with people and, in a group of people chosen for their abilities to bring communities together I do not stand out and so have not become valued for filling that role.
My relationship with Ashley and with our partners in Tabora has helped me see that to create a friendship that I feel is worthwhile I need to have conversations in which we share information that we hold close to our heart. Even if I love spending time with someone, the relationship does not feel fully meaningful until there has been an exchange of confidences. The language barriers and fact that the Tanzanian definition of friendship does not include this has made it hard for me to feel that any of my relationships here are that meaningful.
Prior to this year I very strongly held the belief that I get along well with everyone. This has not proved true with Ashley in the least and, unfortunately for me, it is not because she is a horrible person or impossible to get along with. This has been a large blow to my self-conception and I have at many times felt ashamed or disappointed in myself for not being able to look at her with more compassion and forge the connection that I want to have. I want so much to be a kind person who treats everyone well, but I’ve had to face that no matter how strongly I hold these ideals, I am just a person and sometimes I can’t live up to this.
I think of myself as being incredibly smart and competent. I value these things about myself and expect others to value them about me as well. There are many times this year in which people (2Seeds and Tanzanians) have not believed these things about me and I have learned that that mis-match is very hard for me. It seems that it is very important to me that others hold me in high regard. This doesn’t mean that others opinions of me form the basis for my self-esteem, just that I very badly want them to change their opinions when I feel they are under-valuing me. This fact has proved very detrimental here and has impeded my ability to enjoy this experience and put as much into it as I would have liked. It’s been a bit painful to confront this fact and to realize that caring so deeply about what others think of me is something that doesn’t necessarily serve me well.
This year feels like it has mostly just been a large fight in which I am trying really hard just to stay afloat. I have rarely made things work the way I wanted them to on the first try and I’ve been coming to the realization that I will leave this year with many of my hopes for it unfulfilled. However, all of this effort means that I have gotten to see how much of a fighter I can be. I know that I have tenacity and am willing to keep trying when I am unsatisfied with my reality. I have done a great job of trying to muster the resources I have in order to change the parts that are making me unhappy and then to try again using a different resource if that didn’t work. All that being said, I will be thankful when I can return to an environment in which things come easily again and I don’t have to fight so strongly for happiness and my successes.
I forgot to publish this one- so here it is, a bit belated
written 4/27
Our departure date is in a little over two months and we have just developed our plan for the rest of our time here. Ashley designed most of it and its basic purpose is to get our women comfortable with regular manufacturing and selling of a product (potato chips) and allow them to begin earning some money right away.
We are planning to meet at Mama Tabia’s house once a week to cook and package chips. These chips will be sold in teeny bags (not much bigger than a credit card) in Tabora, because it’s a market that’s easy to break into (if all else fails you can send a child walking around shouting ‘chips here!’ and sell them that way). It’s also a place in which we don’t have to find outside people to sell (in Korogwe we would need to find shopkeepers who could agree to sell the chips) and it’s not a problem if we are still working on quality control.
We are selling each bag for 100 Shillings (about 6 cents). We are hoping to make 20 bags this week to sell and increase our output by 20 bags each week. We decided that we needed to begin with a very manageable amount and gradually ramp up production so that the women can produce more as they get more comfortable and streamlined with the process. This way we can also work out all of the kinks with production along the way and, if something goes wrong, the consequences aren’t huge because we can just meet the following day and make the batch over again. By the end of our time here we hope to be making 160+ bags a week.
It is incredibly possible that we will not be able to sell 160 bags of chips in a week in Tabora, so as soon as we start producing more than we can sell we will start partnering with shops in neighboring villages. This will give our women experience with reaching out to sellers, but it will be in an environment they are comfortable with (when we brought them to a few stores that cater to wealthy people who pass through Korogwe they became overwhelmed.) Right now we are planning for the expansion of sales into Korogwe to happen with the next PCs.
Financially, Ashley and I have decided, essentially, to give them the seed money to start this business. In a large part this is because this is the most financially strapped part of the year, so the women have very little money to put into a venture like this. We are asking each of them to give 2000 Shillings to the group fund so that they can continue the work after we leave and before the next PCs arrive. When we told them this, the women told us that they don’t have this kind of money right now. (For reference- $2000 shillings is $1.25 and feeds a family of five for a night.) Because of this we asked them to give us the money within the next two months, before we leave and they can pay in little installments of 100 or 300 Shillings at a time.
Ashley and I will be paying for the materials needed to cook (we are buying a large wok, strainer, basin, and we got a slicer from the US to make thin, uniformly cut chips.) We will also be covering the costs for supplies until we leave so that the women can work on production without having hold-ups due to a lack of funds. The money that is earned from the chips sales will be split up among the women- 10% for each
written 5/9
By this time in the year I was certain that I would have our ‘trash problem’ figured out. If you read my posts from early on you may remember that I spent time puzzling over how to reduce the volume of trash that we burn. I am sad to say, I still have not found an answer.
There are containers and plastic bags that are clearly reusable and so we clean and save these. We throw all of our food out the door so that it can be eaten by the bugs and animals. There are a number of things that the kids enjoy playing with, so we hand these objects off to them, knowing full well that after the kids destroy them they will end up littered between the walkways. Other than that, we really have no idea what to do with things other than burn them.
Because of this, we have piles of potentially usable objects stashed in our house with the hopes of one day figuring out what to do with them. We still have a number of containers of stuff left from last year that we put in our extra room and have never dealt with. We have piles of cardboard boxes in the corner from packages we have received and we just kind of leave all of the unusable metal things in a pile (aluminum lids from food, broken radio antenna, batteries.) The room accidentally just turned into a jungle gym for the cockroaches because we have no idea how to get rid of/ effectively use most of the stuff in it.
Most of the time this becomes just background noise to my life- I put the trash in the garbage bag like normal at home, I never spend time in our room-of-stuff-we-don’t-know-what-to-do-with, and none of it’s a big deal. Every time I take out the garbage, however, I am faced with it again. In the US, we have a culture of ignoring trash. We hide it from sight and forget about it. Having to burn my own trash disrupts this pervasive mindset and always forces me to re-confront (with guilt) the fact that I am consuming goods whose remnants have no role other than to be destructive. This was even more glaringly obvious this last time when the fire I started burned a brilliant green.
Having to face my trash is not only breaking me out of the mindset, but helping me to deconstruct it. In the US we don’t actually have any better way to deal with our trash- we just make it the government’s responsibility instead of the individual’s. What I’m doing here with my trash is not actually that much more problematic than what happens to my trash at home.
The one difference is that at home we can recycle paper and metal. When I burn trash here what I really want are systematic ways to reuse all of the trash. That’s what recycling does and what turning the peanut butter containers into holders for rice and lentils does. However, the reason why I have so many things to burn is that there are no systems put in place or obvious reuses for so much of my trash. The plastic/paper/aluminum foil juice containers are gross inside from the molding juice, are too strangely- shaped to be used as a container, and have too many materials in them for them to be broken up even if there was recycling.
I grew up with messages about buying things that have less packaging, but on a personal level it feels so hard to do that. The protein bars from home get me through my days, the snack foods from Korogwe really brighten my life (I get so tired of rice, beans, pasta, and fresh veggies), and the soup mixes from Dar (a new flavor!) make meals so refreshing. I feel silly that I don’t want to make a better choice for the planet (which really, is way more important than I am), but the idea of giving up these few and far between luxuries sounds like such a horrible option.
In college I was introduced to the idea of cradle to grave design in which the design of a product and its packaging includes design for its disposal. This includes products such as printer ink cartridges that you can bring to a store and get refilled, computer parts that can be sent back to the manufacturer and placed into another computer (which means not updating the design too often), and (for a third world country) beer bottles that can then be used to build houses (http://inhabitat.com/heineken-wobo-the-brick-that-holds-beer/). Although I thought it was an intelligent idea then, now I feel like I truly understand the need. If every piece of packaging that I bought had an obvious new use or place to bring it (like the glass coke bottles I’m now used to drinking from), then I wouldn’t have any trash to burn. That would be truly wonderful.
written 5/2
The fact that we live in the villages with the people we work with in 2Seeds is unique, but also presents some difficulties. It means that there is not often any different between the tasks you do for work and the tasks you do for yourself. In addition, because we live in the villages, we live like the villagers, which is a task in and of itself.
The women here are hard workers and spend their days just working to maintain the cleanliness of their lives and keep their children fed. Their responsibilities as women and mothers and sisters mean that they do all of the cleaning, cooking, childrearing, and work such as getting firewood and water. If it is not farming season, they spend huge amounts of their time cooking, washing up the pots, cleaning all of the clothes, and keeping the house clean. All of these activities are done without electricity, so they must be done between about 7am and 7pm and all of the cleaning is done by hand which necessitates spending time on each and every spoon and shirt.
I have found all of this cooking and cleaning incredibly hard to keep up with. Because of this I have skipped a huge number of meals, take showers less often than I should, have started paying someone to wash my clothes, and I rarely clean all of the dirt out of the house in the way that should be done. I have such difficulty in part because of the enormous amount of time it takes to do all of these activities. Because every meal must be cooked from scratch it takes me at least an hour to prepare a full meal. This means to eat lunch and dinner daily I am spending around 3 hours a day cooking and eating. If I do make two full meals a day I have to wash all of the dishes, which is often another hour of work if I cooked something that must be scrubbed from the pots.
This leaves me feeling that I have very little time for work. Add to the time investment that life without electricity requires the fact that my work here has also included designing a project and getting it off the ground, I have often felt as though I could not manage all of the work I’ve had to do.
This sense of being overwhelmed has lessened as our project has become more concrete. Now that we have clearer goals and tasks to achieve, I can feel good about our achievements and take breathers. Earlier in the year it felt as though we had to spend all of our time on project work because there was an unlimited amount of work to be done.
However, there are still aspects of life here that I have trouble balancing. There are still days in which I feel that I have to choose between spending my time completing a project task (that once completed is done) or doing cleaning (which will just have to be repeated as soon as things get dirty again.) I suppose this is a challenge in life in the US as well, but here things get dirty so much faster. I’m not sure that there’s any great solution to this aside from more deliberately choosing how I spend my time, but the nature of this job in which life and work are all bound up into one continues to be difficult to navigate.
Life as a Jamie 