Tanzania Odds and Ends

Some of you who follow my Facebook postings know I suffered a bit the other weekend with stomach issues that also hit me this last weekend.  I am going to use that as a convenient excuse why I did not get to this posting earlier, but in reality I have just struggled with what to say about these last two weeks so I am doing another clearing house of interesting (to me at least) tidbits.  I promise there should be something in here for everyone.

Zachariah is the second from the left

Family members of the guest of honor wear a flower necklace

Let's start with Birthday Parties.  Young Zachariah (the doctor's son who follows me around) had a birthday a couple of trips ago and I have been planning to tell you about that.  I was invited to the celebration mainly because the photographer only had one roll of film.  (For those only born in the digital age we used to have to buy rolls of film and put them in our cameras that normally only took 24 photos and then had to take them somewhere to get developed-I know how archaic).  It was by our definitions very low key.  Most of the guests were adults (mother and father and I guess a brother or uncle and his daughter since they stayed with the family-all the workers on site and then three kids his age, the photographer and me).  I think the ladies that work on site had the most fun cutting up and getting dressed up for the event.  Everyone but me wore their best clothes but since I did not know until after it started I was not prepared.  They served a big meal to everyone and the kids all went and ate out of one big plate on a mat.  Interesting was the fact that the young girls started taking the meat out of all the guys plates not long after it was served.  Basically what the men don't eat the women do (yes they already had some meat with their serving but it appeared the men only ate small portions so the women could have more).  Then there was some dancing.  There was no cake or gifts, the ladies tried a couple of times to sing happy birthday but nobody else joined in.




Purchasing Materials:  Next is trying to purchase materials for projects.  The first part of the process is determining projects, what is needed and developing budgets by going through town and finding who supplies which nail or screws you need as well as every other material.  If you remember from earlier blogs not every hardware store has every nail and every nut and bolt store specializes in one type and there is only one store in town that carries x or y.  Multiple that by about 30 different items.  

After that I submit to the Board in the USA and they approve some don't approve some or delay them for funding.  Those they fund will be supplied funds with the quarterly wire to the bank account in Arusha.  Then the accountant in Arusha has to withdraw funds (typically in US dollars).  This can take a while if the bank requires proof again that he is allowed to withdraw money from the accountant as it did this quarter delaying the process by about 2 weeks.  After that he exchanges it for shillings, loads it onto an phone's Mpesa account and then transfers the shillings to my operations phone Mpesa account.  The phone has a limit of 3 million shillings and I have a daily transaction limit of 1 million shillings (about $600 USD).  However in Singida it is nearly impossible to withdraw that much in cash in a single day.  Most stands where I can withdraw money have limits.  The three best are about 300,000 shillings a day but it is difficult to find all three open on the same day in fact finding one open is the norm.  So to withdraw enough money to purchase items takes about week.  You want as much money as possible to make all the purchases at one time so you don't have to store them or arrange multiple truck deliveries to the site which is about 200,000 shillings per delivery.

Now is the interesting part.   The largest denomination bill they have in Tanzania is a 10,000 shilling note or Elfu Kumi shillingi.  To give you an idea of the problem I have taken a picture of 800,000 shillings for the solar power generation system with my glasses.  That is about half what I spent on sealing for bats and screening windows.

You can imagine me trying to hide this on my person as I walk through town to make my purchases.  

With the delays from the bank and the normal time it takes to get money from Arusha to here (1 week) plus the time to withdraw money we are now finishing the purchases and I hope to transport them all out to the site next week.  We are scheduled to cut the wood on Monday.  Here they only sell the boards in 8 or 10 inch widths so you have to go back to the lumber yard and have them cut into strips for the project.

While waiting we lost both ladders that were available in town to the local power company which just went on a shopping spree I guess.  My supplier and I have been contacting folks to look for them in other towns and have found a large A frame in Moshi which has been shipped to us.  Still looking for an extension ladder.  Hoping to avoid a trip to Dar if at all possible.

SoapSaver:  Many of you found the talk of the bath bucket purchase interesting so you may enjoy the discussion on my other blog www.theyarnsover.blogspot.com about how important a soap saver was to crochet here.

Peace Corps:  Recently I have discovered the Peace Corp has started sending folks to various areas of Tanzania and they are now working around Singida.  I have meet a couple of them and got invited to their Saturday picnic and game day which turns into Saturday night drinks and charades.  It was a large group of 19 but not all are from the Peace Corp.  There were ladies from France and South Korea who are teaching at different schools as part of NGOs.  It was a fun day with an interesting mix of individuals.  They try to get together once a month in Singida so I hope to hang out with them some more.  Here are some pictures from atop the big rock at the lake.

Organizing the room again:  As normal I had to reorganize the room to accommodate some of the items for the site being stored in my hotel room.  I did find some really nice soapstone hippos in Nairobi that have slots for holding pictures in them.  They did a good job of putting some of my favorites out.

In addition I finally broke down and found one of the guys that walks around selling plastic shelves.  There are many items you can only buy from guys that walk around town (almost like door to door salesman) selling items.  It helped organize food, current crochet projects, books and electronics so I can get a lot of that off my desk and actually have some room to work on the computer.  I apparently did it right and got blue for men and not pink which is the other color they are available in.  I just bought what he had.