01 June 2015

what to expect when you're expecting.

Living in Tanzania for one and a half years has taught me to expect the unexpected, or better yet, to do away with expectations all together. We are taught that "expectation is the mother of all disappointment" and that is just as true in Tanzania as it is in the United States.

I just finished up three consecutive weeks of business skills training, teaching a group of 50 young Tanzanian mothers who dropped out of secondary school due to pregnancy the basics of entrepreneurship and the process of starting and running their own small group enterprises. (A general apology to all of them for putting up with my Kiswahili every single day.)

Peer facilitator (greenish-blue), Zabibu, fields a question from one of the young mothers.

Going into the training, I was filled with expectations about their level of motivation and ability to grasp the material, bond with their peers, and hit the ground running with their future businesses. As life goes, some of that played out to my expectations, some of that did not.