Augustino....Shreve

---

Sooo, anyone who would care to read this would probably know that last summer, I spent a month in small village just outside of Arusha in Tanzania. I was about an hour and a half away from Moshi, where we are staying now, and I made several close friends, one of whom I actually managed to maintain contact with through emails and an occasional phone call. Obviously, coming back to Tanzania I wanted to see him again and when I told him the hotel we were staying at, he came all the way down here just to see me and say hi. He wouldn't even let me pay for his cab ride, the cab ride that cost him roughly four or five times his daily budget.
My friend, Augustino, is extremely poor. He sees all the tourism that comes through Tanzania and wants to become a tour guide for a safari company. Unfortunately for him, he is not the only person who's had this idea and the job market for tour guides is an extremely competitive one. To have any chance, he would have to attend a wild-life university for a number of years, a university for which he has absolutely no way of paying. After mulling this one over, I made the connection between my friends problem and the project we have been working on in English all year. Right now I am on Kiva.org looking for reception offices in or around Arusha. We are both hoping that if he can make it to the office and is granted an interview, his sheer joviality, intelligence, and honesty will shine through and he will be granted a student loan that would set the course for the rest of his life.

---