Tonight’s blog entry will be especially short (I hope), since it’s 9:30 here.
Today, we met two groups who were at earlier points in the program, partnered with two other members of our group, individually or in a small partnership (i.e., you don’t have to wait for your church to partner with a group).
The two groups were Smile (second year) and Chapakazi (first year). There was a LOT of dancing. When you go on a Zoe trip, get in touch with your rhythmic movement side because you will definitely get a chance to exercise it. (It gets a little bit easier for me every time.)
Some of the things that struck me about the groups’ presentations:
They were urban groups. One member told us he had been able to pay for extended English lessons, and then switched his presentation over to fluent English. The facilitator then translated from English back to Swahili for the benefit of the groups, which made me smile. That young man has a bright future ahead of him. We heard from all the members.
After that, we played musical chairs. The facilitator explained the rules carefully to us.
Karin, the pastor of the Smile group, then gave a full-throated sermon, almost without notes, on vision. The thesis was that if you have vision, you can have confidence and strength of purpose. She said that vision comes from God, and a person’s vision can die if that person does not do what they should do, or if they don’t have good mentorship. Who you surround yourself with is important.
But also, vision can be revived, and we can draw strength from our vision. She really got revved up.
After that, we played a game in which Jeremaiah, Chapakazi group’s facilitator, taught us the Swahili words for some parts of the body:
mabega — shoulders
masakee — ears
tumbu — stomach
ndomo — mouth
pua — nose
[something] — eyes
[something] — head
Then we played the game. Jeremaiah stood facing us and few members of the Chapakazi group stood behind him. He would shout out the name of a body part and we were supposed to touch it on ourselves, but the trick was that he would touch a different body part. So, for example, he’d shout “Ndomo!” and grab his stomach. We did not expect that and much hilarity ensued. Eventually, all of us but one were eliminated, because we touched the wrong body part or were too slow.
But we turned the tables and played the same game in English. It was a lot of fun.
Then came the group reports. I heard tuberculosis and UTIs mentioned for the first time (as part of the health & hygiene training).
At least one of the groups visited orphans and sick elderly people in the hospital. We keep hearing stories of “our” orphans reaching out to other people in need. I’ve said “I’m amazed” and “I’m impressed” so often that it must seem repetitive, but… they remain amazing.
(I was hoping to upload pictures and videos, but the internet in the hotel is fighting with me, so I’ll have to do it another time.)
(Note: I’m typing this in a text editor locally so an Internet glitch here doesn’t vanish all my text into the bit bucket. Because of that, I can’t write italics or bold, so I use upper case for emphasis. I’ll try to go back and edit, if I have time, once I upload this text, but if you see upper case, that’s what’s going on.)
Today, we visited our group, Inuka, together with a group partnered with Harbor UMC in Wilmington. They are Maasai, and some of them were wearing traditional (or traditional-looking) Maasai clothing. Inuka’s pastor, named Lightness, gave a homily focusing on confidence, regardless of one’s background. She mentioned the following verses (I think I got them right, but there was some doubt):
1st Sam 17:32 — “David said to Saul, ‘Let no one’s heart fail because of him; your servant will go and fight with this Philistine.'”
Prov. 28:1 — “The wicked flee when no one pursues, but the righteous are as bold as a lion.”
Acts 4:13 — “Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John and realized that they were uneducated and ordinary men, they were amazed and recognized them as companions of Christ.”
Philemon 1:8-9 — “For this reason, although I am bold enough in Christ to command you to do your duty, yet I would rather appeal to you on the basis of love”
Heb 10:35 — “Do not, therefore, abandon that confidence of yours; it brings a great reward.”
Heb 3:6 — “Christ, however, was faithful over God’s house as a son, and we are his house if we hold firm the confidence and the pride that belong to hope.”
1 John 5:13 — “I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, so that you may know that you have eternal life.”
Acts 4:31 — “When they had prayed, the place in which they were gathered together was shaken; and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the word of God with boldness.”
There was a beautiful Maasai call-and-response song, with the call in that unique high, nasal, quavering African voice that is so stereotypical. It was extremely impactful to be in the presense of people who simply do this as a matter of course, as opposed to a touring group in a theater in the U.S. I wish I had recorded it, but (1) I was completely enthralled, and (2) it was kind of a hymn during the worship-and-homily service part of the program and I didn’t think it would be appropriate to just whip out my cell phone and start recording, even though I said I’d try to be a better tourist.
Then we heard from each family head in the two groups. I counted 42 people. Some of the children reporting were appearing on behalf of their elder brothers and sisters, which I took to indicate that their elder brothers and sisters were working. Each individual report had the same structure, specifying the speaker’s name, age, number of siblings, which group they were in and what the major thing each family head was doing. The activities of the members included (all told):
selling chickens and eggs;
selling goats;
burning music and movies to USB sticks in “studios”;
hair salons and hairdressing;
brick-making;
selling firewood;
selling livestock;
selling utensils;
vehicle and motorbike mechanics;
selling soft drinks;
selling rabbits;
farming;
selling tea leaves, sugar and powdered and bar laundry soap; and
vehicle and generator mechanic (that was Stella).
(A word on Stella: she’s the chairman of the Inuka group and she is a dynamo. She kept the group focused and energized during the program we were part of today, and when we went out to visit the members’ various businesses, she helped. She helped Lebahati when he was demonstrating how he makes bricks. We heard from the facilitators that she knows and (I think) visits each family.)
After the individual reports, we got a report from the Inuka group secretary, Esuvat. We heard the normal list of things they were trained on; hygiene, entrepreneurship, legal rights, vocational training, community-building. But, a couple of things struck me.
They got seeds as a grant after their agricultural training on how to grow their own food. I don’t think I’ve emphasized that very much in the past, but the seeds are a grant from Zoe. In a very real sense, part of what we give to Zoe is seed money.
There was particular emphasis, which I’ve never heard before, on women’s sexual rights: on rape; female genital mutilation (a.k.a. female circumcision), a particularly barbaric practice; and early marriage. In particular, the children are taught who to report violations to, which actually includes various government bureaus. They’re also taught that if the bureaus they report to (and there actually are government departments for women’s affairs and men’s affairs) don’t respond promptly, they should also go to the police, who are instructed and trained to handle these issues. I was impressed with the concreteness and detail of this information — this is not an empty formality.
The Inuka group (again: just starting their third year) has achieved the following:
All group members have multiple businesses;
5 members have gotten their national id cards;
3 members have gotten their birth certificates (required to get national health insurance, among other things);
3 families have gotten electrical connections;
5 families have gotten water connections;
7 members have opened personal money accounts;
1 member has shifted to a better house with electricity;
1 member has acquired further training (in hairdressing)
This last bullet might not be quite accurate. I heard from several members that they had been able to afford further vocational training. Zoe provides initial training, but for a second (or third) vocation, I think the youth pay for that training themselves.
Then Joshua, the secretary of the Upendo group, made his report for the group. It was very similar, so some of the highlights were:
Multiple members have taken second trainings;
15 members use M-PESA (electronic personal banking via cell phone (text message, I think));
2 members have gotten water connections;
ALL siblings are in school.
Finally, we heard from Inuka’s mentor, Belinda. Upendo’s mentor had just had a baby two weeks earlier, so she wasn’t there, although we did meet her later. Unfortunately, I took no notes and don’t remember what she said. But she clearly had an interest in the well-being and progress of the group, as did her counterpart.
After these reports, we took a stretch break led by Stella.
Two or three of the members demonstrated how they fry potato chips. This includes sealing plastic bags by folding them over and melting the edge into a thin line using a candle flame, which makes it look as if it had been sealed by a hot machine. (Stella did the sealing.) They also fried bananas, and we tasted both of them. They were delicious.
We played a game the group introduced us to, in which we are supposed to keep our hands behind our backs, inflate a balloon inside a Solo cup and pick up four more cups using only that inflated balloon, and stack them together. I couldn’t inflate the balloon without using my hands, so I “had” to cheat there, but after that, I did manage to do it. (Erika has video.) The kids were able to do it fairly easily and they were very competitive (although it was all in fun).
Some of the boys danced for us, showing local, non-traditional dance moves. They were just as impressive as traditional dance moves. Stella joined in, matching the boys in their skills and creativity.
Then, several of the kids gave more personal testimonies about their past, before Zoe, and how Zoe had helped them create a better life for themselves. They didn’t dwell too much on their before-Zoe lives, but they weren’t pleasant. They did concentrate on telling us that Zoe had essentially helped them turn their lives around.
They gave us gifts of scarves and bracelets that they had made.
Finally, they invited us to speak. If you ever go on a Zoe trip, you may find yourself standing in front of a group of 15-to-20-year-olds who have just told you of heartbreaking difficulties and amazing recoveries, so be prepared. :) Several of us spoke, which is good, because we all said different things.
At the end, they asked one of us to close in prayer.
The Inuka group’s community project is brickmaking. There is a fair amount of construction in the area (something akin to gentrification, actually), so there is a demand for bricks. They sell each brick for 200 Tanzanian shillings, which is a little less than a dime.
We visited some of the group members’ houses and businesses.
We started with Joseph, to see his brickmaking operation. The fun thing about the brickmaking is that it’s done mostly with materials on site. Local dirt (which is pretty fine) is mixed with imported sand and local water to make mud, essentially. Then, the mud is packed into a mold, and the resulting bricks are dried. After drying, they are stacked into an immense pile with sort of a tunnel (or more) passing most of the way through. The tunnel is filled with wood, and the bricks are fired. After that, imperfect bricks are removed and the remaining pile of bricks is the responsibility of the buyer to pick up. So, there’s plenty of labor for the brickmaker, but at least s/he doesn’t have to worry about transporting the bricks.
We also saw the new house he built for himself with some of his bricks, with the help of someone he hired (N.B.: in two years, these kids have transitioned from living at starvation level to having businesses profitable enough to allow them to hire others). He is still working on it, but he has a very nice space now.
We walked to see Upendo group’s pig project. They have bought a 3-month-old female pig of a breed that bears at least ten piglets every three months for $200. They are raising it to breeding age (after training from a local agricultural extension agent), and then they will rent a male for $100 for a week (I think; although I might be wrong about the figure, apart from the fact that it’s not cheap). When she bears a litter, each member family of the group will receive one of the piglets. Obviously, there won’t be enough piglets for every family to get one, so the group will vote on who gets piglets. That gives everybody enough time to prepare a space for the piglet (and, eventually, pig). This represents good money for the families, since they will then eventually be able to sell pigs for $200 each, which is quite a lot of money. Or they could raise the pig to full maturity and sell to a butcher for a lot more.
We visited Dennis, who has a combination barbershop and movie/music “studio”. That means he downloads music and movies onto a USB drive his customers supply (or buy from him), for a fee.
Lightness has a salon, in which she braids or washes customers’ hair. She charges more for washing because she has to pay for water, shampoo, and the electricity to dry the hair. Part of her entrepreneurship training includes learning how to calculate what her expenses will be, and price the wash correctly.
Lebahati showed us his firewood and brickmaking business, and he demonstrated how he makes bricks. I have a series of videos which constitutes a mini-documentary, which I MIGHT get uploaded by the time I post this blog entry.
He’s been working on an 8,000-brick pile since July 15. It’s pretty immense. If every brick comes out perfect, he’ll earn (/ (* 8000 200) 2500) = $640, approximately $320/month and $10/day. That seems like pretty big money to me, although he has to pay for sand and (probably) water and firewood, and he has to pay himself a decent wage.
So, that’s about it for the day. (Sadly, the videos have not yet uploaded. It may take some time, so I’ll have to make a separate blog post containing them.)
Today, we got an overall talk on Zoe from Trice. She opened by talking about Joseph. I had expected her to take the tack of speaking of how Joseph was the marginalized child that nobody liked (at least, among his brothers) and how he was able to provide value to his entire family in spite of that, but instead she said WE, the donors, were the ones adding value.
Some quick excerpts from my scribbled notes follow. This will be a bit disjointed because it’s late at night and I just want to get something out without spending too much time wordsmithing it.
The Tanzania program was started in 2019. It was very hard at first to convince the government of the model because the government kept expecting a relief model, or a model of some sort of corruption. The relief model asks, “how many children will you feed?” and the corruption model asks, “are you loaning these kids money with the expectation of a return with interest?”
The answer is, “neither of those. We are expecting to build relationships with these kids, and the return on investment is that they will (likely) never be beggars or need government support again.” The empowerment model gives these kids RESPONSIBILITY. And the Zoe program gets RESULTS. As a result of that, now, when government officials visit, the Zoe program is at the top of the list of things to visit, which is quite different from how things were when they started.
The population of Arusha is 600,000 and the Tanzania Zoe program has touched almost 7,500 kids, so that’s 1% of the population of Arusha.
The program is currently balanced between urban and rural kids. The difference is that the urban kids are sharp, but also unstable in that they sometimes fly hot and need to be talked down, or something in their life changes such that they miss some group meetings.
Another difference between urban and rural is that the urban kids don’t have the available land to plant crops, but they still do plant food for themselves in tiny plots or even containers of soil.
The rural kids are mostly Maasai, and there are some cultural issues that need to be overcome there (mostly having to do with things like forced marriage), but progress IS being made.
The Zoe program is constantly being adjusted as the staff see what works and what doesn’t; it doesn’t necessarily stay in a fixed format. However, the basics are still adhered to, and those are (skip this if you already know it):
Basic education on hygiene (in order to stay healthy, obviously);
How to grow your own food;
The basics of entreneuership and how to run a small business;
What each child’s legal rights are;
Some trade skill training (e.g., sewing, mechanics).
And finally:
These orphans and vulnerable children are formed into a social group, so they can support each other emotionally and with advice, group decision-making, and accountability.
(Ok, stop skipping.)
The facilitators took some questions:
“What is the most surprising thing to you, as a facilitator?”
Answer: Listening to the kids is important. Right speech to the kids is important. The facilitators are worried that they’ll do damage to the kids by saying something wrong. This is very different from relief programs (which many of them are familiar with and may have worked in), because in relief programs, there’s no chance to evaluate effectiveness (other than “how many kids did you feed?”) because you give a kid relief and then you may never see that kid again. The empowerment programs are about building relationships — the facilitators know their kids and can see them grow.
The mentors (community members who volunteer to mentor the kids regularly and frequently, since the facilitators can’t be present all the time) are really important.
“Why so many orphans?”
It’s hard to say, but Trice took a stab at it.
Poverty — parents die young;
Polygamy — a single mother may get sick and there’s no dad to help;
HIV — there is still some stigma around getting diagnosed, so people don’t get diagnosed in time;
Malnutrition — as in poverty, parents die young.
We went to visit some Zoe graduates. They are doing very well. Many of them run multiple businesses and/or have moved away from Arusha because they found better markets for their goods and services elsewhere. They have kept their siblings in school and several of them have hooked up their grandparents with running water. They have been out of the program for almost two years, so I was particularly impressed that they actually came back to present to us — it speaks to me of how important this program is to them.
We heard their report from an Islamic member of the group, and several members of the group were Islamic. I take pride in that personally because that means Zoe is open to all. It is a Christian organization and we are showing the love of Christ, but we’re not requiring anybody to convert, nor are we even pushing it. I think it is good enough that as many people as possible know that God loves them, full stop.
A quick run-down of some of the things the group did when they were still in their 3-year program: selling “chips” (fried foods like potatoes or a ground-bean-and-onion mixture, and usually extending to chicken); selling clothes; selling chicken; selling fish; selling maize, beans, and grains; selling shoes; selling jewelry (I think), selling fruit and other produce; vehicle repair.
Their achievements include: diversifying their businesses; better housing; more education; pit latrines (not sure what that’s a step up from); tailoring training; shifting to other locations to take advantage of better opportunities.
Then, about ten members of the group spoke of their individual achievements, which I won’t repeat here. Finally, their mentor spoke, and a couple of things she said were:
These kids were loved and supported (relationships were built); and
These kids had a “different spirit”. I believe that meant that they had a different “spirit” from other kids who were in relief programs, and this “different spirit” is a good thing.
Finally, Trice spoke again, and she spoke of the story of the ten lepers who were healed by Jesus, and only one turned back to thank him. I’ll have to think on that some more.
We made it to Arusha, and I made it onto the internet, finally. This is us, disembarking from the plane (Airbus A350) in Arusha. I just meant to take a snapshot, but the plane was too big, so: panorama.
We met Claudine, one of the facilitators (social workers) here, and also Trice (which comes from “Beatrice” but is pronounced like the second syllable of “Patrice”), the director for Zoe in Tanzania. (By the way, while on the topic of pronunciation: Tanzania is pronounced “Tahn-ZAHN-ee-ya” by the locals.) There will eventually be 14 of us, the last four arriving while the rest of us conk out. Apex UMC is the biggest contingent, I believe. For four of us, this is our first Zoe trip.
We had the chance to ask Trice some questions, so I asked about other expenses the Zoe kids have, other than food. The answer is “none”. When they start the program, they are living at starvation level, so any money they manage to get goes directly to food.
Then Claudine took us to change money (2,600 Tanzanian shillings to the dollar in denominations of 2,000, 5,000, and 10,000, so the money expanded in volume pretty quickly). After that, we took a stroll around downtown Arusha. I regret not taking pictures. I will try to be a better tourist in future. The population here is over 600,000, and it’s pretty busy with traffic and motorcycles and jitneys (three-wheeled, enclosed-ish cab). There’s not really a sidewalk (usually), so pedestrians just mix it up with traffic. There’s a lot of horn-blowing, but it works. We had a chance to walk around in a local market, but we passed it up, being pretty jet-lagged. People walk here much more than they do in the US, unsurprisingly.
After that, supper (which only some us barely stayed awake for) and then immediate crash into bed. Now it’s bright and early, 6:30 am. I’m not normally an early riser, so this may be the only early-morning post.
I was speaking to someone recently, saying that our Zoe kids live on $2 per day (technically, I think the extreme poverty line now has moved to $2.15/day).
And they said, “yeah, but $2 goes so much farther in places like that” or some such.
And my response is “yeah, but….” and then I got stuck, because that’s exactly my pitch to people when speaking of how worthwhile an investment in Zoe is. A little help (empowerment) in places like Africa, where there is such extreme poverty, does go a long way, because we’re paying (or helping to pay) for:
Salaries for social workers on the ground;
Local experts (e.g., agricultural extension agents from educational institutions in-country);
Some capital expenses (e.g., sewing machines and welding kits, which the kids receive after demonstrating sufficient interest by attending training classes).
and most of that stuff is cheaper because it’s local (e.g., salaries).
But.
The “$2 per day” figure is sort of an economic fiction. They’re not really living on $2 per day. They’re living on the same ability to purchase goods and services as if they were living in the U.S. on $2 per day. They have the same purchasing power as if they were living here on that amount. Imagine living in the U.S. on $730/year.
So.
I found a grocery store receipt in the pocket litter on my dresser today.
A pound of cheese
$5.40
A pound of onions
$1.50
A box of triscuits
$3.00
A pound of rice
$1.60
A pound of blackeyed peas
$1.85
Cooking rice & beans is going to cost some fuel, though.
Meat
?
Nobody has a refrigerator, so meat is pretty rare.
Not sure what their other expenses are, but food will eat it up pretty quickly. In some countries, school uniforms must be bought and fees must be paid. I don’t know how much cooking fuel costs. Most of them travel on foot because gasoline costs. I don’t know if they pay rent (a lot of them live in housing inherited from their parents, although some of the houses have fallen into disrepair). I don’t know how much it costs to rent a stall to run a small business out of.
Anyway. That “$2-per-day-as-if-in-the-US” disappears fast.
These are the members of our Inuka (“Arise”) group, which is in Ngaramtoni, on the outskirts of Arusha (a city of over 600,000 people). 21 households and a total of 79 children.
Although I’m calling this our “2023 group”, they are really a 2021-2024 group.
This stuff will tear your heart out (it’s well-produced), but I feel like it’s an accurate reflection of what our ZOE kids face. Zoe is not the only organization doing this, but it’s a good one. Note how often they mention community banks and micro-loans.
(As a quick reminder, $2/day is the definition of “extreme poverty”.)
[Update, 7 Oct 2019: Actually, it turns out that Zoe is about the only group doing this. Other groups do elements of the Zoe model, but not the entire model, and the entire model is actually important.
So, there are goups doing community banking/micro-loans, and groups helping kids go back to school, and groups helping kids build housing, and so forth, but not the holistic basic-hygiene-small-business-legal-rights-spiritual-community thing that Zoe feels leads to sustainability.]
That’s a great-sounding verse, and we have it on one of the t-shirts we’ve gotten from Zoe. I’ve sometimes heard it in other context besides Zoe.
I always had a tiny problem with it, though, and that is that it sounds a little saccharine, a little Hallmark-y. “Don’t worry, says the Lord, everything is going to be ok.”
It’s a bit outrageous to present that verse as if it will comfort orphans who are struggling every day to avoid starvation.
As Christians, though, we do have faith that everything will turn out ok, even if things seem hopeless now, and we do ask people to just have faith. That’s the line, anyway.
But I think it’s worth looking at the context, as Rachel, our trip leader, mentioned one night:
Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease. But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare. For thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Do not let the prophets and the diviners who are among you deceive you, and do not listen to the dreams that they dream, for it is a lie that they are prophesying to you in my name; I did not send them, says the Lord. For thus says the Lord: Only when Babylon’s seventy years are completed will I visit you, and I will fulfill to you my promise and bring you back to this place. For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope. Then when you call upon me and come and pray to me, I will hear you. When you search for me, you will find me; if you seek me with all your heart, I will let you find me, says the Lord, and I will restore your fortunes and gather you from all the nations and all the places where I have driven you, says the Lord, and I will bring you back to the place from which I sent you into exile.
Get on with your lives. Build houses, plant gardens, marry and have children. Work for the welfare of your community (even though you are exiles in its midst), because the benefit of the community will redound on you. It’s going to take a long time. Keep the faith and stay in touch with God.
Here beginneth (or endeth, depending on what order you’re reading these blog posts in) a handful of more “philosophical” blog posts, of various lengths.
If you look at the picture of us visiting our (UUMC’s) Imbaraga “Power” group, you may see a couple of kids whose heads are covered.
These kids are Islamic. I consider this a mark of what kind of mission we’re engaged in. We offer support and comfort because that is what God calls all of us to do. We do not require those who receive what we have to offer to profess a faith that Jesus Christ is the (sole?) savior of the world, although, of course, we’re happy if they do. (Bearing in mind that merely professing faith is not enough, as James says.)
There are those of other faiths who also respond to a call from God. As Jesus says in John 10:16, “I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice.” One example (of many, I’m sure) is the Nigerian (Islamic) imam who sheltered 262 Christians from death at the hands of a mob by offering his own life in exchange.
Some might consider the idea of an imam (or anybody of another faith) following Jesus the shepherd to be belittling or demeaning to their faith. However, if Jesus is God, or if Jesus is God’s representative on Earth, then it’s God that’s calling.
Our actions speak louder than our words, and those actions are our witness.
