As with many countries in the world, Sunday is a day of rest in Zambia. We usually use Sunday to be quiet and catch up on administrative work, but this being such a short trip we did sneak in a couple important things. However, we will keep the blog short in pursuit of resting a bit before a big push in the beginning of the week to fit in everything in time for our departure on Wednesday (already?!).
At 10:00 a.m., our financial team arrived: Martha, Theresa and Veronica. Jen had anticipated that we would need to walk step-by-step through creating adequate tracking systems for monthly expenses and income. Much to our delighted surprise, we found that Martha is ON it!! We chose the right person for the job. She clearly knows what she is doing and has put all of those systems in place already. She came with a large binder that has printouts of income and expense from every month (beginning with January when she started with us) along with comparisons with months prior. In fairness to the Kantolomba team, we must say that before hiring Martha they had been doing an excellent job keeping track of everything by hand in record books—heroic, really. It’s just that those records were very difficult for us to follow and, of course, impossible for us to check from home in the U.S. Martha’s contributions are a dream come true.
Smiles from the financial team
Realizing that we already had all the foundational pieces in place, we were able to tackle the next layer of financial systems. They are going to work on getting percentages to us of how the money is used each month (food, salaries, etc.) as this is useful for things like writing grants. They also said they would like to put systems in place for petty cash (they currently have to go into town to withdraw from the bank any time they need any cash at all—very inefficient with town so far away), as well as nighttime emergency medical funds that local residents can borrow from. Martha will also be charged with tracking the loans cooperative members get from the general fund.
Although we knew Martha has been doing financial classes with the cooperative, this meeting really brought to light how valuable this new information is for the team. For the first time people are empowered to understand their household finances, the relationship between income, expense and money left over (or not!) at the end of a month. Many have begun to save! Even many folks in the United States can relate to the challenge/discipline of having something left over at the end of a month. We are realizing that this financial information could be the most critical piece for the cooperative in moving to self-sustainability. We all know its possible, and someone like Martha can help us see the practical avenue for how that can happen. Very, very fun.
Meanwhile, Muyunda and Tracey had made a computer training meeting for 10:30 a.m. It was a great treat that Muyunda brought along his family—his wife and baby daughter.
Muyunda with his beautiful family: wife Sandra and baby Elizabeth
Baby Elizabeth doesn't realize yet that she will meet her first musungu (white person)
Tracey and Muyunda spent the next 3 hours (!) going over how to send email, create Word documents, and the other basic functions Muyunda will need for his reporting job.
Tracey claims she would change professions if all her students were as open to learning as Muyunda!
Sandra and Elizabeth patiently wait For his maiden internet voyage he sent an email to “Mama Cheri.”
He had composed it the night before at home, which we are sure was no small task given he is brand new to typing. We were all quite touched and want to share his email with you:
Dear Mama Cheri, How are you?, here we are okay, Mama Cheri, I would like to express my gratitude for the gifts & the job opportunity you have offered me, I appreciate & promise to do the best. Ever since I met you people{2007}, I have been praying that one day I join you in doing the good work & be part of the team. Now I believe in the name {living compassion} & what it stands for, to you & the living compassion team I say thank you. Finally, I say thanks & stay blessed, Yours faithful, Muyunda
After all of our guests had left, we had a late lunch and then set about catching up on our administrative tasks. We confess we did take a bit of time off for a lovely dinner with Eunice.
Time for big rest for our big week.