After 15 years in China I moved to Africa 4 years ago. First to Uganda and since more than two years now I live in Tanzania. I have been sponsoring multiple students in Uganda but once I left it became difficult to continue because I could not ensure that the money got to the right people. Already careful, I usually paid school fees directly to the schools. But I also helped them to buy things they need for school. One time a child told me that the money I sent for her was taken by her older siblings. In another case I sent several hundred dollars at once to pay for a child to get into secondary school. I already knew the family and the situation in person, and had been supporting her for a while, but as I wasn't there any more I had to trust someone else to deliver the money. I gave it to a school director from the primary school this child just graduated from. I had been supporting 3 children in that school, and I trusted the director as he was very generous with the children, allowing them to be behind on school fees. That is not common. Many schools will refuse children if the fees are not paid. Unfortunately the payments didn't go as planned. The director claimed different school fees than the school actually asked for, and even those were not fully paid. As a result the child dropped out of school and I have no way to get her back in to school as there is no one I can trust to handle the money.

I don't know what happened to the money. Ostensibly the director used it to support children in his own school. As such the money has likely not been wasted, but the trust is broken because people don't take being honest seriously.

This is unfortunately not an isolated case. I heard from another organization that is supporting orphans in Uganda that at some point they found out that some of the children were not really orphans. It wasn't their fault. The orphanage they worked with wasn't straight forward in their communication. It may even have been an innocent translation error, or misunderstanding. It is not uncommon that families send their children to orphanages temporarily while they can not afford to care for them.

The point is, that it is very difficult to verify what the real truth is. And it takes time to establish trust. The main problem is the stark difference in income. Even to middle class locals, as a middle class westerner I appear insanely rich to them. They have no idea that I am struggling just as much to find work, and that I can't afford to help them pay for what even I consider luxuries. The TV has many shows about the life of more well off people or from other countries giving people a false impression of what is a normal life in other countries.

I can only tell you this because I actually came to Africa to see the reality on the ground for myself. With my children I could live at home semi-comfortably with government child support and unemployment benefits (as a single parent with young children taking a full-time job is out of the question). Instead I have to get by with finding online work, which is getting increasingly harder. Or I have to rely on sponsors to support my work.

I didn't come to Africa with big goals. Especially not with the idea that I could actually make a difference. I came here to learn, and to teach my children about the reality of the world. I also try to work with students and young developers to give them work experience in software development. Currently I guide the software team in a company that is producing electronic learning kits for robotics, physics, etc for schools.

It hasn't been easy. I had a stable client when I came here paying me enough to cover the life here. But after a year I lost that customer and two years later my savings were used up. The move from Uganda to Tanzania was actually cost driven because living in Uganda was a lot more expensive. I am now struggling to get by and I don't know how much longer I can afford to stay here. I would like to dedicate more time to helping students but the struggle to find work is taking most of my focus.

Besides software development, one thing I would like to do is to audit the work NGOs are doing here on behalf of the people who donate to them. I could travel and produce independent reports on what the results are from the money you donate.

I do hope that I will get over this struggle and that I'll be able to live here for several more years.

Thanks for taking the time to write that out. I hope you're doing well and I'd be happy to talk more if you want to reach out to tanzaniaeducationproject@gmail.com