Friday, November 11, 2005
It has been an easy week, and it feels good to switch gears and relax a bit. I’m in Morogoro to assist with training the incoming group of volunteers. My only formal duties are for two presentations on how to choose, organize and execute worthwhile secondary projects while they are on-site. I set it up so I am using my own projects as the examples to talk about. I think that is OK, since my big project failed miserably the first time I tried it, so it illustrates how the same idea can work very well or go down in flames.
After two years here, I am still learning. One of the exercises for the trainees was to visit a bunch of local NGOs. I went along with a group visiting WAMATOM. They make bricks. LOTS of bricks. They have the biggest brickmaking facility I have seen in Tanzania. Some people were digging clay and mixing it with water, others molding the bricks and laying them out to dry, then stacking them so they don’t warp as they dry, then creating huge piles, covered with mud for insulation, and with tunnels in them for wood to fire the construction.
It took us a lot of effort to understand why they are an NGO (actually they weren’t, but an NGO does give them some financial advice and temporary assistance when needed) and what they actually do. Turns out that they are a COOPERATIVE. The members were individual brickmakers who got together and contributed themselves to get the capital to get it going. Now people can join the coop by paying a membership fee, and they get training in making bricks. But they also hire day laborers. Their value to the community is that they have their own business, and they employ people. No mean feat, here in Tanzania.
The epiphany for me was that this effort works, and apparently very well, as a coop. I think of coops only as utopian efforts that don’t last long, or people who get together to save money in buying fresh vegetable. The American model is the entrepreneur, and a business is very hierarchical, with the owner/boss/president responsible for whatever and however things happen. But I really think that here in Tanzania, with its tribal and socialist history, they have a different model. Decisions at meetings are made by consensus, not just by the majority.
So I wonder if my ideas on entrepreneurship, and TechnoServe’s course, should be modified to accommodate businesses incorporated by groups as well as by individuals. Don’t know, but think I will want to talk to Atiba about this when I am in Dar next week.
It pisses me off to be learning things about Africa now, just when I am about to leave. Like mangoes. For two years I haven’t had any of the mangoes from the beautiful trees right outside my house because long before the mangoes ripen, all the little kids in the neighborhood are whacking at the tree with sticks to knock the mangoes down while they are still hard and green. They eat them right away – sort of like our kids eating little green apples. I just found out recently that those green mangoes, if left on a shelf for about four days, will ripen and are quite good to eat. Two years I have missed out on this basic information and now I am going away! Damn!
Sunday, off to Dar es Salaam for three days of medical exams and filling out forms, and then on Wednesday evening, off to India. Wow!
After two years here, I am still learning. One of the exercises for the trainees was to visit a bunch of local NGOs. I went along with a group visiting WAMATOM. They make bricks. LOTS of bricks. They have the biggest brickmaking facility I have seen in Tanzania. Some people were digging clay and mixing it with water, others molding the bricks and laying them out to dry, then stacking them so they don’t warp as they dry, then creating huge piles, covered with mud for insulation, and with tunnels in them for wood to fire the construction.
It took us a lot of effort to understand why they are an NGO (actually they weren’t, but an NGO does give them some financial advice and temporary assistance when needed) and what they actually do. Turns out that they are a COOPERATIVE. The members were individual brickmakers who got together and contributed themselves to get the capital to get it going. Now people can join the coop by paying a membership fee, and they get training in making bricks. But they also hire day laborers. Their value to the community is that they have their own business, and they employ people. No mean feat, here in Tanzania.
The epiphany for me was that this effort works, and apparently very well, as a coop. I think of coops only as utopian efforts that don’t last long, or people who get together to save money in buying fresh vegetable. The American model is the entrepreneur, and a business is very hierarchical, with the owner/boss/president responsible for whatever and however things happen. But I really think that here in Tanzania, with its tribal and socialist history, they have a different model. Decisions at meetings are made by consensus, not just by the majority.
So I wonder if my ideas on entrepreneurship, and TechnoServe’s course, should be modified to accommodate businesses incorporated by groups as well as by individuals. Don’t know, but think I will want to talk to Atiba about this when I am in Dar next week.
It pisses me off to be learning things about Africa now, just when I am about to leave. Like mangoes. For two years I haven’t had any of the mangoes from the beautiful trees right outside my house because long before the mangoes ripen, all the little kids in the neighborhood are whacking at the tree with sticks to knock the mangoes down while they are still hard and green. They eat them right away – sort of like our kids eating little green apples. I just found out recently that those green mangoes, if left on a shelf for about four days, will ripen and are quite good to eat. Two years I have missed out on this basic information and now I am going away! Damn!
Sunday, off to Dar es Salaam for three days of medical exams and filling out forms, and then on Wednesday evening, off to India. Wow!
