Graduation, Field Visits, Making new friends & Meeting up with old friends

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Graduation

The BTC programme works with both in-school youth and out of school youth, promoting and teaching leadership and entrepreneurship skills. We had the honour of attending the graduation of the in-school youth in Mwika, a village about an hour north of Moshi. There were 8 youth who completed the BTC in-school program. The ceremony consisted of a few performances, presentation of certificates, speeches from the BTC team and partners and also, food and dancing. I think they were just as excited to meet us as we were them.

Field Visits to Mwika

The first two businesses to get approval and seed capital from Anza were mushrooms and onion businesses. During our first field visit up to Mwika, we got to see the site where the mushroom cages were going to be built. The BTC team, along with "mama mushroom" (our local mushroom expert) trekked up to Mwika to meet with the mushroom group and also learn the basics of mushroom cultivation. It was exciting to see projects that were once just ideas on paper actually starting to come to life. I can't wait till all the projects are implemented and they start running their businesses. I also tried sugar cane for the first time, so yummy!

Video:

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Making New Friends & Meeting up with old friends

So it took Mili's birthday to break the streak of no new friends! We hit up Glaciers, a local bar/club or sorts, made new friends and had a great time. I mean, the place has a tree house AND a bar, there's no other choice BUT to have fun! Plus, if you go to a bar 15+ deep, everyone will want to be friends with you!

This past weekend we decided to go to Arusha to have a mini reunion with a couple of classmates from Humber, it was crazy to think that the last time we saw them was in Toronto. Arusha is about 45 min away from where we live, but it's a much bigger city so it was a bit overwhelming. We hit up Masaai Market, got some photo ops in along with some souvenirs and called it a day. Saturday night was filled with shisha-ing and drinking with our old and new friends, while our little brother back home thought it would be funny to tell us that our Majiki gave birth to her puppies without us...=/

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