halfway point

Hey everybody, here's an excerpt from an email i sent home today... hope everyone's doing well!

so as of today i havebeen here exactly one month. I have exactly 3 weeks and 2 days left! Time has gone by relatively quickly here... it feels like a month has goneby, but not really... i dunno. on thursday we had a good meeting with mr.mapunda and the manager of SEDA (small enterprise development agency), a local organization. it was good because after our presentation to the social workers on tuesday, it felt like we had hit a plateau and didnt really know where to go from there. but on thursday we did some brainstorming and came up with ideas to do for the rest of our time here. we'll be having focus groups and more meetings with the people who have participated in the programs of other organizations, in order to get the perspective of the actual participants. we interviewed yesterday the lady who sells bananas to Amani. her child used to be at amani, and she's been selling bananas to them as her only business since 2004. its sad though because although she seems to be in a good position (as the only seller of bananas to a large organization), she only works one day a week and only makes a profit of $4 per week. except she has 8 children. that kind of blew my mind. its basically 50 cents per child per week, with nothing left over for her. that's just crazy. she was a valuable source of information, because we were able to ask her all about her business, her neighbors, her village, and whether or not people can cooperate together in her neighborhood to advance together. it kind of challenged some of the assumptions we've been making, especially the idea of having groups of families start businesses together, because she said that people don't really trust one another and that even though people may be excited initially about such collaborative efforts, that they usually break down when people sit down to settle out the details. that's kinda sad, and signals a need for more education and training of the people. i asked her what she thought would help the people of her neighborhood, and she said animals projects (like pigs or chickens) which was exciting because we've already been planning for that. however, our idea was for families to run these projects together, but she said it would work better individually because people take responsibility for their own things much more than when they are in groups. i hope all of this works out and we can find a way for people to take ownership of their business.
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saludos a todos!