Days in Dar

I am safely home! Thank you so much for all of you who were praying for my safe travels. I had no complications or delays or any problems on the 30 hour journey home, praise the Lord! It was amazing to be reunited with my parents and is nice to be home in America again! Wow, it is easy to realize now how many things about the US that I took for granted before. I wanted to share with you a few of the highlights of my summer and then I will post some more pictures too. Thanks again to all of you for your support and prayers- they brought me through this summer and safely back home again. Thank you.

Wow, it has been such a long time since I have written, I apologize. The last couple of weeks have been very busy! 

1. Christian and I at Cape of Good Hope Nature Reserve in Cape Town

2. Sunrise at the beach in Dar

3. Me with a group of women at one of their daughter’s “coming out” celebration- a traditional custom that is a very big deal and includes hundreds of people, drums, and dancing, along with many other things I couldn’t understand.

4. Me and Hayden and Lucy and Lucy’s twins, Grace and Joy

Well since I have been here five weeks now, I guess its about time I talked a little bit about my research! I suppose that is the reason why I am here. The first, well, four weeks of my research went pretty slow. But last week it suddenly all seemed to come together. My assignment is to find out what financial resources are available in Vingunguti (V). I don’t think my host could have been any broader! As such, I spent everyday the first couple weeks here, waking up and thinking to myself, “hmmm, I wonder what I will do today?” After finding out within the first few days that there are no banks in V and supposedly, no Microfinance Institutions (MFIs), I started to wonder about what I would be doing this summer then. But I persevered, and kept digging deeper to see what I could find.

Last week, God gave me the right people to talk to, and I found out that there are a few places in V to get loans. I was talking to a group of men and asked them, “do you know where you can get loans in V?” One man eagerly piped in, yes! My father works at a place where you can get loans. I said oh, what is the name of it? Where is it? He said, well, its over near the titanic bar, and its called SACCOS. I thanked them heartily and told my translator, “do you know where the titanic bar is?” he said yes, and I was like, let’s go! We trudged through mud and puddles (it had been raining all morning) for about a mile until we saw the sign for “titanic bar.” My translator went over and asked some men at the bar if they knew where a place was to get loans around here. One man seemed to know and so we followed him down the road to a small house. This is it he said, but its not open today. It will be open tomorrow. I was so excited! Oh well if it wasn’t open, at least I knew where one was now.

So we went back to the same place the next day. Thankfully, it was actually open that day. It turned out that the loan place just used the front room of the small house, and there was no sign marking what it was. Joseph went into the room to see if we could talk to someone, he came back out and said that we would have to wait at least an hour to talk to the loan officer. That’s fine I said. There were three women sitting on a bench outside the office. I started up a conversation with them right away. Are you here to get loans? A resounding yes. So what is the name of this place? They confidently replied, UNICEF. I tried to keep my composure, but I was laughing inside. Oh really? Wow, it seems as if this place is too nice to be UNICEF, haha.

I sat and talked to those women for over an hour. It started to rain and so we moved the bench under the front porch and all huddled close. Over a hundred flies shared the small space under the porch with us. We all stared out at the rain and the railroad tracks stretching out before us.

Finally, there was word that I could go in and talk to the loan officer. I followed Joseph into the room, expecting for it just to be me and him and the loan officer. I walked in and my eyes got wide as my eyes fell on over 20 people sitting in rows on benches, all staring at me as I walked in. The loan officer introduced himself and asked me for my papers (cover letters from Steve and the government officer of V giving me permission to do research). While I sat down in front of everyone, he read over my letters. He seemed to approve of them. “Okay, well go ahead and introduce yourself and then you can ask them a few questions.” I tried not to laugh. I don’t even know who these people are or why they’re here, what am I supposed to ask them?! I glimpsed a sign on the wall, ‘YOSEFO’ ah, I had heard of them before, they were an MFI, well, at least I knew what this place was now.  So I started and Joseph translated, “hello, my name is Rachel. I am learning about the microfinance resources in V. I am very glad to be able to be here with you today. So, are you here to get loans? What do you use the loans for?” I could tell the people didn’t want to be there any longer, and they certainly didn’t want to answer my questions. “Um, oh so you use them for small businesses? What kind of businesses?”  After finding out they mostly sell animals, the loan officer abruptly told me I could go back outside now and wait until he could talk to me. I kindly thanked the group for their time and hurried back out to my comfortable spot on the front porch.

After about another hour, the loan officer finally let me in. I breathed a sigh of relief when I saw the room was empty. The loan officer ended up being very nice (and he spoke English!). He let me interview him for about an hour and ask anything I wanted. So I ended up with a lot of good information about YOSEFO (not to be confused with UNICEF).

The rest of my stories are all very similar. The women outside of YOSEFO had told me about three other places where you can get loans in V, of course, not knowing the names of any of them, or where exactly they were. I am lucky that my translator is not too proud to ask directions from anyone. So just last week, we “stumbled” across five MFIs in V (not finding out the names of them until we were inside of them and shyly asking, “so what is this organization?”)

My goal for right now is to be able to talk to people from each of the 8 loan offices in V (I have done 4 so far) and write up reports on them, containing the history of the organization, their mission and vision, how long they have been in V, where they are, when they are open (because you never know!), what the qualifications are to get a loan there, what their interest rates are, etc. I am also working on drawing a big map of V and putting each of the loan offices on it.

Three of the organizations have made me go to their main offices in downtown Dar and get permission from their head managers to get information from them. Only one of these have called me back and given me permission so far, so you can pray that the other two would give me the permission I need, and in a timely fashion!

After I am done with the reports, I plan on following up on each of the organizations and going to some of their business training sessions and other meetings they have for their clients.

So I am at a very exciting point. I am glad I have clear direction now. I am also happy because my host is very excited about my research and I think it is really going to help them.

I can’t say thank you enough for all of your prayers and your emails and notes of encouragement to me! Thank you!

The first picture below is a group of women in Vingunguti teaching me how to make chippati (sort of like pancakes). We gathered quite a crowd. The next picture is Fatuma and I at her house, she is a woman who lives in Vingunguti that I stop and talk to quite a bit. Next is Hayden, me, and Lucy (a good friend of Hayden’s) at the Taifa Stars (Tanzania’s national soccer team) game. The game was Saturday afternoon and was so much fun. They recently built a new stadium in Dar that is state of the art. It was fun because there were so many people! The stadium fits somewhere around 60,000 people and it was completely full (even the President of Tanzania was there!) The last picture is the place I call home now!

Hayden and I both have bikes here, since it is one of the easiest ways to get around here (see photo below). The first day I got my bike we rode them out to a little restaurant to get drinks. Not only do people around here never see white people, but seeing two white girls riding bikes (women here don’t ride bikes), we were quite a sight. Every single person we rode by was yelling out “muzungu!” and laughing hysterically and saying things to their friends that I did not understand.  There were even people crammed into buses who yelled at us as they drove by. 

The next time we went to ride our bikes a few days later, my bike had a flat tire. Since I had just gotten it we decided to take it back to the shop where I bought it because it was probably a bad tire. So, we started walking them to the bike shop (attracting lots of attention of course). On our way there, the bike “fundi” just happened to be on a little side street and saw us walking by with our bikes on the way to the shop and called out to us. He was sitting outside a little shop he and his brother owned drinking a beer and talking to friends. We figured he saw my bike was broke and would go with us to the shop. Instead, he said nothing about the bike, but brought some chairs and drinks out for us, and we sat out there for over an hour talking to him! (well Hayden talked to him and I just sat there and smiled and nodded and watched the kids playing in the road) After refusing more drinks, we finally told him we needed to go since it was starting to get dark. So we took our bikes to the store and he said he would have it fixed by morning. 

The next day I went with my translator to pick up the bikes, and we continued on our way riding them to Vingunguti. I live in Buguruni, but will be doing all of my research in Vingunguti. So everyday now, my translator and I hop on our bikes and make the approx. two mile ride to Vin. The first day my translator (Joseph) turned his head back to check on me and make sure I was still alive about every two minutes, but I think he finally trusts that I can ride a bike now. There are two stretches of road I take to get to Vin.- the first is a dirt, sand road that is very hard to peddle on and the next is a busy paved road crowded with people, chickens, bikes, carts, and cars. Needless to say, it is always an adventure getting to and from work, and I am always sure to draw attention wherever I go!

My favorite time since I have been here so far was Wednesday afternoon. I had spent the morning in Vin. walking around the community talking to people, ate lunch with Joseph at a little food stand, then met Hayden to visit a friend of hers. Her friend’s name is Mama Ruifa, she is a muslim woman in her forties with six kids, all of them grown, except a girl who is 11. When we got to her house, she brought us cokes and we sat in her living room for over an hour talking. Hayden knows her pretty well, so she asked her a lot of questions about microfinance in V. There are no banks or MFI’s in this whole area!!! The only way for people to get loans here is to loan each other money or form a ROSCA or ASCA. After over an hour of talking, she said very matter-of-factly, “its time to go back and cook.” So for the next 2 ½ hours or so, we spent cooking (Hayden, me, the lady, and her 11 year old daughter, see picture below) outside in her “kitchen.” First we chopped up vegetables to make the sauce to put in with the chicken. As that cooked we prepared the greens, and shredded the coconut for the coconut rice. Everything is such a long process, and they only have one charcoal stove, so everything has to be cooked separately. After the chicken and sauce was done cooking, they made a spinach dish. All during this time they were teaching me Kiswahili words, playing with my camera, we were all snacking on bits of coconut, and talking about daily life. The 11 year old did the majority of the cooking, she could do everything and she’s only 11! Finally, we started cooking the coconut rice (they pour water over the shredded coconut and then squeeze the juice out. You cook the rice in the coconut juice, its so good!) Finally, after several hours everything was done. Then, they brought out a huge plate, put a huge mound of rice on it with the chicken, sauce and greens on top, and we all ate from the same plate together, sitting out on a mat. It was such a good time of experiencing everyday life here and enjoying the warmness and hospitality of the people here. Time is not a matter to them here. Relationships are much more important than getting things done. I have a lot to learn from them. Cooking is a good way to get to know people here, it is something we see in America as a task to be completed, but here it is an event. On Tuesday, a group of women that I have been getting to know is going to teach me how to cook chappati (a sweet tortilla type of thing). I am excited for this opportunity to get to know them better and hope it helps me to build there trust. 

I am very sorry I didn’t write much this week, it was a busy week! I hope to write more this coming week.

Some praises and prayer requests:

Praise for the relationships I have been able to build so far. Pray that I will continue to be patient with getting to know people and not doing as much research as I would like as I get to know people and earn their trust. Please pray for my neck pain. As some of you know, I have had muscle spasms in my neck since Jan. Since I have no place to get treated here the pain has been worse. Pray that God would miraculously bring healing, without any treatment.  Pray that the pain would at least not get worse so that it won’t take me away from my work. Praise that the head officer at the municipal office is going to write me a letter granting me permission to do my research- this will help me get access to places/people who otherwise would not want to give me information.

Thank you all so much for your continual prayers for me, what a blessing to be surrounded with prayer. Thank you to all of you too who have been sending me emails and writing comments on this site, I really appreciate hearing from you! Sorry if I don’t have time to always respond to them, but know they are much appreciated.