Saturday, March 24, 2012

The Training Sessions Have Finished!


The SACCOS training sessions continue with good attendance, avid listeners, lots of questions, and astute observations.  Our role is mostly recording the lectures, taking pictures and providing child care as needed.  Friday’s lectures covered “Developing a Financial Proposal” and “Managing a SACCOS office.”

Tom was on Radio Furaha again on Thursday evening where the topic was the importance of saving.  He got a lot of questions from listeners.  Unfortunately, the station was having problems with a lot of dropped calls. Tom was able to answer most of the questions, but there was a caller who asked what to do about children who would rather steal than work, and Tom had to tell him he wasn’t qualified to answer that question because he had never had the experience.

We are appreciating the good things about living in Iringa.  The vegetables we get from a local grower are like what we get in Minnesota in July and August.  We’ve been eating fresh sweet corn and green beans several times a week; and beets, tomatoes, peppers, onions and lettuce are delivered to us every Wednesday.  The market offers freshly picked papaya, pineapples, avocados, mangoes, and of course bananas.  In this mile-high city we can enjoy the intense sunshine and when we get too hot, a step into the shade offers a substantial cool-down.  The climate produces geraniums as large as bushes and poinsettia trees.   At night the sky is so full of stars it reminds Sandy of her years growing up on the prairie, only here we see the southern cross instead of the big dipper.

Although we live in the city, our neighbors have livestock, so we hear the familiar sounds of roosters crowing and cows mooing.  Add to that the cacophony of bird songs and dogs barking, it calls to mind the old Vacation Bible School song, “All God’s creatures have a place in the choir, some sing low, some sing higher.  Some sing out loud on the telephone wire, and some just clap their hands, or paws, or anything they’ve got now.”

Before anyone decides to move here, you should know that the power goes out regularly, our water pressure is a strong trickle, our internet is sporadic, and the roads, if you can call some of them roads, well……..we refer you to our blog entries for Kivalamo and Ugesa.

The training sessions concluded this morning, sadly without Itiweni.  Her brother-in-law died very suddenly yesterday while attending a funeral, so Itiweni is with her sister and the rest of her family.
We were back at our house by 2:30 with a whole afternoon ahead of us.  

It's too bad we can't grow trees like this in Minnesota!

At our training session we gave the SACCOS officers all of the forms they will need to run their offices.

Christopher Ugulumu explained how to use the record pads.

He went through all of the forms and had each of the officers fill in examples.
This little attendee needed a nap with Grandma.

It's lunch time!

From his reaction this little guy has probably never seen a picture book!  (He was afraid of the picture of the elephants.)


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