Breathing a Sigh of Relief - The Last Savings Training

Yesterday was the final training in savings culture for my project. Along with some savings basics, like setting financial goals and budgeting, we also included a crash course in basic entrepreneural skills. Fred, a business lecturer from Busoga University, barked out concepts at our audience of mostly women. He even gave an example of a business being like a child - "If you take things from your business, it will be lame! What do you want with a lame child! You are embaressed of it! You even pray to God to take it away from you! Soon you will give birth to a child called business, and you must take care of it!"

You can't say he doesn't know how to get through to people! I'm relieved that the trainings are finally over - all the work that goes into visiting groups to mobilize, promoting the training, setting it up, and seeing that it all goes off without a hitch remind me of all the reasons why I'll never be an event planner. A couple of times throughout the day, my bubble burst - I had been up since 6 am, no one was listening to me, the venue hadn't cleaned out our presentation space, etc, etc, etc.

(Recording participants' box numbers)

At the end of the day, I was more than relieved to hand out the boxes to our members (about 40!) and declare the project all most done. The chairman and patron of our SACCO, George, must have sensed my tension because afterwards he brought me to a cool new nightclub in Bugembe and bought me a soda. He said, "Relaxing is so important! Sometimes you just work work work with no relief! You're lucky my leg is broken - otherwise we could go out dancing!"

The great thing about Uganda - when you're ready to throw in the towel and quit, there are always people there to bring you back up again. I can't believe I have only 3 weeks left!