Placement and chickens!

Well we are now ending our 4th week here (doesn’t time just go when you are happy!!) – however, this means that we are half way through our time with our projects. Donald seems to be going great guns with his – actions plans and budgets etc, but I still seem to be waiting to find out what they want from me.

I have made some achievements tho. My placement is with TACOPE (I have only just managed to remember how to say that – and now can’t remember what it stands for – hang on I’ll go to check my notes) – Okay, got it “Tanzania Community-based Option for Protection and Empowerment”. That’s another thing – Tanzanians love words. When a sentence of 6 – 8 words will do, they have 16+ and most of them are very long wordy words which are not needed.

I thought they were like a Voluntary Services organisation, one which worked with other voluntary groups and supported them. Not so – they are a group of very well meaning volunteers who wanted to help orphans and people with HIV/AIDS. It started, three years ago, with 15 people who formed a board, a constitution, became registered as an NGO and paid membership fee’s. (The constitution is such a heavy wordy document!!!) The office, in which I have been given a desk – one of the two there, is a small room just off a dusty dirt side street in town. Basically the few guys there (all volunteers) sit there all day, including Saturday, and talk to people who come in to see them. These could be local government officials, church people, or just folk who want to talk or need help. They put together proposals to donors/funders when they either hear they is some money available, or if they are asked to by a group who are looking for support.

They wanted me to help them streamline their organisation!!! Well, firstly I put together a history of what they had done. This was quite an eye opener, firstly I had to sit and get all the information from Mr Messo, who is a lovely chap, late 60’s, retired and the man at TACOPE. He has everything he knows about TACOPE either in his head or in his small black plastic briefcase which goes everywhere with him. He has dates, figures and everything either in his head or in the briefcase. He says its not worth keeping it in the office and things get lost amongst the papers – there is no system there – but it is all there, in his head. So that was a good couple of days, teasing it out, and encouraging him to tell me about it all. I also had to impress on him that the little things he thought weren’t worth a mention, needed to be in as they showed an achievement or success which TACOPE should recognise. (Familiar territory or what!). So that was good, got that done.

Next, I looked at their books – literally books!!!! They had four accounts books and try as I might I couldn’t understand them, nor see any system in them – and the addition was not correct and nothing seemed to balance. Well the figures at the bottom of each column were the same, but why?
So I set them up a system (me – accounts!!) and my SAIDIA partner, a young school leaver called Terry, was set to enter all the accounts into one book, which I bought. To start at year one, find bank statements and receipts and enter them month by month. This was a task in itself, as everything was there somewhere, either in the one locked cupboard or in drawers in ‘my’ desk, but where? Mr Messo was thrilled, thought the (very simple) system I set up was wonderful. So that took up some time, but it is now completed and does look good – not sure the addition is still correct, but hey, its better than it was and does ‘sort of’ balance!

Then we decided that I should look at their ‘Profile’ – well Mr Messo wanted me to do a Business Plan for them, but I felt we needed to understand the organisation first and to enable us to do that, the wordy document which was their profile, needed to be reworded. (You sometimes read through a paragraph of this sort of document, read the words, which all make sense individually, but after you have finished the paragraph you think “what was that all about” – it seems that Jen has this problem with her work too, wonder if this is because Swahili has a smaller vocab, it is more a concise language, and so when it is translated more words are added to make it look better) Anyway, got it down from 5 pages to 3, and think it has been improved – Mr Messo likes it anyway. Next need to work out what we do with it.

We had a review on Friday of how my placement was going. Mr Messo, Joey and I (with Terry and two others sitting in and listening) – think we decided that the way forward now was to try to get some funding in. So we are going to put some letters together, and make up a letter heading, so that we can approach local businesses and big wigs to see if we can get some support from them. Don’t think I’ll hold my breath on this one, but at least it will give the TACOPE guys an exercise in fund raising, and I can then leave them with some templates of letters etc. Well, I can only do that if we can get them a computer – there is one in the office, but it doesn’t work. They agreed to buy this from someone in Mwanza for Tsh 400,000 (£200) – they gave him Tsh 280,000 on account and he brought the computer to them. It didn’t work – so it was taken to a fundi (tradesman) who said “the hard disc is broken and there isn’t enough memory” – so pretty useless. Now we have said that if they get the money back, we are sure we could get them a new one from somewhere else for the same Tsh 280,000 – but the guy who sold it to them can’t be found. So frustrating. So we will see what happens with this. Watch this space, as they say.

Anyway on Thursday last week, Joey and I went along with three others from TACOPE to visit a couple of the projects they have been involved with. The first is a women’s co-operative. There are ten people (mainly women) who run this workshop. It is a dress makers, and TACOPE bought one of their sewing machines for them. The ‘business’ supports all those involved, (well supports may be too strong a word – maybe contributes to their income is better) and they still manage to give something to the orphans for their school uniforms and books. There is a tremendous sense of responsibility and support for the orphans, people with HIV/AIDS and widows. I believe this is a legacy from President Nyerere – and is a strong thread which runs through the country. Orphans are classed as such if they have only one parent, and HIV/AIDS does leave a lot of widows and single parent families, or children with no parents to support them.

So we sat in this shop/workshop, stopped work, and we chatted through what they do and how they manage. One of the guys then of course said what they are looking for are donors – to help them buy stock of fabrics etc. However, I felt that they had it pretty well organised. They had swatches of materials, so didn’t need to hold stock, and when they had an order, they went out to by the material they needed – seems to work to me. We had photo’s taken and then left them to carry on with their sewing.

We then went along to a chicken farm (bet you were wondering where the chickens came into this episode!) It was a small holding, actually just near where our house is. Again run by a group of about 14, mainly women. They have three cows, loads of chickens and a good patch of land on which they grow greens, veg, potatoes etc. Again they send a lot of their excess to an orphanage. The chickens and the cows were in really good condition. There were day old chicks, (1,000 +) week old chickens who would become layers, older ones who were laying and really old (3 yr old) ones who were coming to the end of their egg production time and due for the pot. They had a ready market for their eggs (myeye) and the whole place, whilst made of pallet type wood, bits of scrap and tied together with pieces of string, (Hillbilly style) was really well run. Didn’t smell bad at all. The chickens seemed to be in amazingly good condition, and having recently seen all the programmes in the UK on battery chickens v free range, I think they compared well with the better ones – ie the free range! Again tho they were asking for more support, but they seemed to have a success story here – a going concern which was sustainable, brilliant! (But quite noisy as it is just around the corner from where we live, and I can hear them now as I type!)

So I do feel I now know more about my placement – and I do have a few things still to do with them or for them. The computer is something we still have to resolve but we’ll see about that later.

Meanwhile, just to update you, went to the market in town with Jen & Joey on Saturday to busy fresh stuff and had my phone pinched from my bag!!! Luckily that was all, but it is so annoying – it was very cleverly done tho, the whole place is so crowded and pushy, and there was a pincer movement and I was squashed between a couple guys, felt a tuck at my bag, which was around my shoulder, but by the time I’d checked, they’d gone! So easy – tried to phone it straight away to ask for it back (well pay for it back) but the sim card had already probably been thrown. Anyway – luckily that is all that went and hopefully I will get my number back and another phone on Monday. Hey ho!
Lots of love Jane