18 March Friday
Holy fuck, I almost just died in a heart attack! Was preparing my bag for my weekend trip when a mouse just ran across the room.
Me and Ahmed went back to the headquarter of Pepsi this morning. The guy acted really nice, but they only spoke Swahili. As the TTB, they will get back to us next week. We went to Posta to meet up with Hatibu and saleem and the 4 of us went to Mohammed Enterprise.. Outside the office, we saw Mohammed himself. He is prob one of the richest people in Tanzania. We waited for the manager for 2 hrs and had just given up when he finally could see us. He as well, asked why they had missed their last appointment in jan this year and questioned the seriousness of the project. He told us that if they had come back in Jan as they were told, he would have given them money, but for this year, the budget was pretty much already set. I told him I sold my furniture back home in order to have money for the flight to Tanzania so I could support this group. To have a white person in the group really gives a better impression for them. Sadly, I would say.
Back home, Salome who had a 'pinning' (ed note: pain) finger 2 days agoand who caught the flu yday (ed note: NOT)had gone crazy after I gave her an Australian day flu pill this morning. I told her only to take it at daytime, cause it will keep her awake during nights otherwise. Prob explained by placebo, she has been running around, cleaning my room, washing my clothes and pressed the most amazing juice out of passion fruit, mango and ginger. Too bad I only had two of these flu pills with me…
Hatibu and I had a really nice talk today. He reminds me of one of these playful high school kids and its hard to see him as the manager of the place. However, he is one of these rare people who does a LOT of things and is practically working his ass of just in order to feed his family. He does not have a wife or any kids himself, although he is already 32. But he told me he really wanted to, however with 6 siblings and all their kids, he already had enough mouths to feed. He asked me if I was married or wanted kids and I told him I'll prob never get married, but I might want to have kids one day. He did not make that equation to work. For him it was impossible to even imagine to have kids without being married first.
Hatibu told me he wanted to start yet another project to improve the relationship between farmers-distribution-market-consumers. He told me that here in Africa people fail to handle food. If it rains a lot, all the food gets damaged. People don't have resources to store it. As much as I would have loved to work on a project like that I told him its better just to focus on one project at the time. And 'row it in land' as we say in Sweden (Em and Arash joke, actually got another one just for you Arash: Wood taste in the bum! Haha!) He somehow agreed.
Me and Ahmed went back to the headquarter of Pepsi this morning. The guy acted really nice, but they only spoke Swahili. As the TTB, they will get back to us next week. We went to Posta to meet up with Hatibu and saleem and the 4 of us went to Mohammed Enterprise.. Outside the office, we saw Mohammed himself. He is prob one of the richest people in Tanzania. We waited for the manager for 2 hrs and had just given up when he finally could see us. He as well, asked why they had missed their last appointment in jan this year and questioned the seriousness of the project. He told us that if they had come back in Jan as they were told, he would have given them money, but for this year, the budget was pretty much already set. I told him I sold my furniture back home in order to have money for the flight to Tanzania so I could support this group. To have a white person in the group really gives a better impression for them. Sadly, I would say.
Back home, Salome who had a 'pinning' (ed note: pain) finger 2 days agoand who caught the flu yday (ed note: NOT)had gone crazy after I gave her an Australian day flu pill this morning. I told her only to take it at daytime, cause it will keep her awake during nights otherwise. Prob explained by placebo, she has been running around, cleaning my room, washing my clothes and pressed the most amazing juice out of passion fruit, mango and ginger. Too bad I only had two of these flu pills with me…
Hatibu and I had a really nice talk today. He reminds me of one of these playful high school kids and its hard to see him as the manager of the place. However, he is one of these rare people who does a LOT of things and is practically working his ass of just in order to feed his family. He does not have a wife or any kids himself, although he is already 32. But he told me he really wanted to, however with 6 siblings and all their kids, he already had enough mouths to feed. He asked me if I was married or wanted kids and I told him I'll prob never get married, but I might want to have kids one day. He did not make that equation to work. For him it was impossible to even imagine to have kids without being married first.
Hatibu told me he wanted to start yet another project to improve the relationship between farmers-distribution-market-consumers. He told me that here in Africa people fail to handle food. If it rains a lot, all the food gets damaged. People don't have resources to store it. As much as I would have loved to work on a project like that I told him its better just to focus on one project at the time. And 'row it in land' as we say in Sweden (Em and Arash joke, actually got another one just for you Arash: Wood taste in the bum! Haha!) He somehow agreed.
