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.