What do we do?

Over the past few months, many of you have asked us what we are actually doing over here. You know we are living at a community center in Songea Tanzania, but beyond that is a mystery. To tell you the truth it is a little bit of a mystery to us too, but we always seem to be busy. We’ll try to explain why.

Courtney came to Songea to teach and help train teachers. She designed two courses on teaching methods, one for elementary teachers, and one for secondary teachers. But many of our teachers have left since then and many of the schools went on vacation when the course would have taken place. She has spent a lot of time at the preschool helping to teach and train the one teacher.

Arthur came to Songea to create a farming cooperative and farming education classes. This project has taken many different forms since we have been here, but has actually been implemented in some fashion.

But this only takes up about 10% of our time. So what else do we do?

About a month after we arrived, the director of the community center decided he had had enough and left. Then one of our preschool teachers announced that she was leaving, and then our English teacher announced he was leaving. That left us with and five people working at the community center.

In addition to lacking a director and being short-staffed, the community center also had little organizational structure.

And this is where we come in. Working with the international programs director, our NGO asked us to help the center become self sufficient. So instead of having a director, we are helping to establish a team, made up of the community center employees, that meets weekly to make all decisions. We are also helping to create a local board to advise the team once we are gone. Also, no one here speaks English, so we help the team communicate via e-mail with the NGO in NYC. This means helping to teach them how to use e-mail and how western communication works.

The NGO has also been sending money for construction projects, such as plastering the buildings and building a library. So we organize that too, which mostly involves writing proposals, collecting receipts, and figuring out why everything is weeks behind schedule.

So that’s what we do. Organize, communicate, and oversee construction. Now we are trying to train everyone here to carry out these responsibilities once we’re gone.

But still, there’s the question of what we actually do every day. Well we make our own schedule, and every day is different. We normally start out by making a to-do list while having our coffee or tea. Then we start checking in with team members who live at the community center; giving reminders, collecting receipts, seeing how work is going, and setting up meetings. After that we might help out at the preschool for a little and by 11:00 am we start our 45 minute walk to town.

Once in town we check e-mail and send e-mails to the NGO in NYC, updating them on current projects, asking for advice, reviewing proposal, and advising them on how to structure things on their end. After e-mail, we might head off to a meeting with another local NGO, the regional commissioner, or some of the community members. Though scheduled, this meeting may or may not happen, so often we end up having to go and reschedule for another day. Then lunch, and then the market to pick up fruit and vegetables for the next few days, and then we start our trek back home.

Once at home, we normally catch up with the team members who live at the center, then work on the computer a bit while relaxing with a mug of wine. Which is what we’re doing right now!