Children in Kisamwene gather to have their picture taken and to say goodbye to the mzungu (white person). Notice my cucumber-eating friend on the right!

Kelly's Tanzania Journal
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Read Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3 | Day 5

Today I expected to make the 2 and a half hour trip back to the village where we were on Day 2, but instead, Dr. Sokombi wanted me to visit the other village that had done the preliminary work two days ago. Who was I to turn down an easy drive for a change? Yeah!  My vehicle from yesterday developed a flat tire overnight—surprise, surprise, after driving down the footpath—so Esau has to go get it plugged before we can hit the road. That’s when I learn we had been traveling thus far without a spare—I had actually wondered about that yesterday and forgot to ask. Close call! OK. From now on Esau, you need a spare.

Today’s village is Kisamwene. We convene with 39 villagers, men and women, in a schoolroom made of clay bricks with a door and window openings and a corrugated tin roof. My Heifer colleagues share with them the results of the data collection two days earlier and ask them if they agree with our findings. Yes, they do, is the consensus. By the way, as a group they estimate their income to be half of their expenses. How does someone without credit cards do that?!  I’m told they borrow from more wealthy neighbors, never able to get ahead.

We eat lunch with them—I’m served rice, a small mound of greens and what I think is chicken on a metal plate. The afternoon session helps the earnest neighbors fine-tune their objectives, list specific activities to meet those objectives, what inputs will be needed…These are not easy concepts to explain, but the crowd is there because they don’t’ mind working hard to improve their situation. They spend this entire Saturday, normally a day of relaxation for them, working on these tedious, complex issues. At the end of the day, four groups, each having tackled one objective, report back to the rest. What I love is their support of one another, and the pride in the faces of those reporting. You would think they were addressing the United Nations. We are wrong, dead wrong, if we ever think we are smarter than people half a world away—it is only that we have been raised differently, in a different place, with different advantages. They know things I don’t know, and vice-versa, but I am not smarter. In fact, I videotape algebra and geometry problems that are on the chalkboard in the schoolroom, eager to show them to my math-loathing, high school-freshman daughter back home!

Have I mentioned that it is statistically proven that wealth doesn’t equate happiness? (Read the book Authentic Happiness by Dr. Martin Seligman, among others.) I see happiness on the children’s faces when I speak to them. One of them is eating a cucumber. I have a Heifer staffer tell her it’s called “cucumber” in English.  We start an impromptu language lesson and other children approach; “shoe” as I point to my red tennis shoe; “bare feet” as I point to one of the little ones’ dusty toes…”shoes”, “bare feet”; finally, I take my shoes and socks off and say “bare feet” and they get it. Not that that’s going to help them make it in this world, but it is a special moment. My little friend teaches me “kwa heri”, or goodbye.

As we drive away, I think we, meaning Heifer staff and donors, can make a difference again and again, for this village and the next. It takes time and it takes resources. So much work to do, and the clock is ticking for my cucumber-eating friend.

P.S. Heifer country and program staff will now compose a formal project proposal and submit it for approval. It is a