Thursday, October 22nd 2009

            Today I went for a run and afterwards stopped to speak with Mercy.  It had been a while since we’d had a good, long conversation.  We talked about her business.  She told me she owns the entire row of stores / shops / whatever.  She’d saved up money after 20 years at Uganda Telecom to buy them.  So she’s apparently the “big fish” on the block.

            Go Mercy!

            I asked her how she does background checks on prospective tenants.

            “I don’t.  It’s a gentleman’s agreement.”

            I asked her how she enforces contracts if people don’t pay.

            “There is nothing I can do.  If someone doesn’t pay I cant make them pay.  If I do that, or if I kick them out the entire community will say I’m too strict and collude against me.  This is the third world.”

            Wow – imagine how hard it would be to run a business under those criteria?

            She also said people steal water from her (there is a tap outside that people use when filling jerry cans).  They pay for one jerry can, but a lot of times Mercy walks outside and finds them filling two or three.  Again – if she does anything to punish these people the community will see her as being “too strict.”

            Mercy also told me her sister is a pharmacist.  I told her mine was a pharmacist too.  She then went on to tell me her sister, while a successful professional has had a life riddled with misfortune.  She got into a car wreck coming home one night…3 fractures in one leg…2 fractures in the other.  As a result one leg is 2 inches shorter than the other.  Shortly after recovering her husband was shot and killed in a botched robbery.

            We spoke for a half hour and then I told her I had to leave.

            “See you later.”

            “God willing.”  She reminded me.

            How true.  I suppose I assume that there will always be tomorrow.  A next time.  Another conversation.  Maybe when life is tainted with misfortune, tragedy and the unexpected there is no such thing as certainty.  I suppose I could learn something from her mentality.  More than ever – carpe diem.

            Then it was back to the office.  I attended a graduation ceremony for a group of outside teachers we taught according to the Educate! teacher training module (emphasize “thinking” as opposed to “memorizing”). 

            Then I did research.

            Then I had a meeting with Emily and Angelica.

            Then I did some more microfinance research.

            Yay.

            I came across this interesting piece of information – and it got me thinking…when people say all Americans are rich.  Just maybe we are:

 

            Fact:  Almost half the world's population, 2.1 billion people, live on less than $2 a day. They are trapped in poverty so severe they cannot adequately feed, clothe, or shelter themselves or their families. More than half the globe’s population--3.2 billion--survive on less than $400 a year per capita.