Yesterday, Sunday, I visited a woodcarving friend’s house. The size of the house was not large, maybe 12 feet by 12 feet, and had to fit 2 adults, and 3 children. There were two beds, a small table used for eating and two chairs for sitting. It was equipped with mosquito nets, which was nice to see, and the roof seemed to be made of metal with no gaping holes. Most of the woodcarvers in Tanzania live day to day with their money, and missing just a few days of woodcarving could mean missing a meal or two. I have been often been asked by my students for bus fair, as if they are unable to finish a carving one day, they will fail to obtain this bus fair money.
The poverty of this place has hit me much harder this year than last year. Slowly but surely, I am starting to see through the smiles and the “Hakuna Matata” attitude that many Tanzanians wear when one greets them. Among the most haunting problems, to me, is the inability to continue schooling due to a lack of funds. I’ve heard story after story of students having to stop after grade 7, 8, or 9 simply because of the lack of money. My woodcarver friend was no different, as he had to stop sending his nephew to school after Form 4 (the equivalent of about 10th grade in the US).
Despite his economic situation, he took great strides to treat me well. We had coconut rice, some meat and potatoes (both of which are atypical of a Tanzanian meal. People live off rice and beans day to day. And something as simple as peas may be considered a luxury). The hospitality in Tanzania is really off the charts. My woodcarving friend told me about how it is so difficult to move up in Tanzania, and asked that if I could help in any way it would be greatly appreciated.
I am starting to better grasp the economic tension between woodcarvers and storeowners here. Storeowners are generally much better off than woodcarvers. A woodcarver generally has two choices to make when making sales. The first would be to rent out a section of a store for about 500,000 shillings a year (the equivalent of about $400 or so), and then they get all the profit from the items they sell in that section of the store. For most woodcarvers, obtaining this sum of money at one time is out of the question and so they must settle for the second option, which is to simply sell their woodcarvings to the storeowners. In this case, if we say the woodcarver sells the woodcarving for 50,000 to the owner, and the carving is sold, they obtain 85% of the profit and the storeowner obtains 15%. The storeowner, however, can jack up the price of the sale to over 100,000 and the carver will still only see 85% of the 50,000. This is my understanding of one woodcarver’s explanation, and it sounds a little suspect, but I will have to clarify with some of the carvers later.
Another problem that they face is that the carvers must obtain a special type of wood that grows quite a distance from Dar Es Salaam. Many of the storeowners can afford to go there and bring back wood, but the carvers themselves are unable. As a result, woodcarvers must pay a fairly high price in order to purchase the wood before being able to carve. Here again, lies another barrier to higher profit. Honestly, this seems like something microfinance would be ideal for, but I’m uncertain as to why it hasn’t been done and perhaps there are barriers that I have not seen.
Today, I again went with the chairman of education in the Tanzania Carvers Association to try to get the school registered. First, we went to a local branch, but found that the person working there was, surprise surprise, not available. We then tried calling the lady we had met last Friday, but she was not picking up her phone. We decided to take the daladala (these are like mini-buses that are actually very dangerous in concept, but the means of transportation here) over there, and on our way over, we received a call that she would not be available today (despite telling us she would be), and that we would have to come back on Wednesday morning. Given that we were already on our way there, we figured we’d stop by anyway and see if anyone else could help us. Of course no one could, and this one gentleman said he would help us remind the lady to stay on Wednesday. Thus is the way things work in Tanzania. Government officials sleep in late, and leave work early.
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