One night I came home to find Yusuf, my 31-year-old host great uncle with a stack of papers. He very happily told me that he’d been working
with 2 of my volunteers and they’d shown him how to record the finances in his
shop. He showed me everything he’d been taught (which was actually quite long
winded because there were a lot of examples which were not of particular
interest at all). Through doing his finances properly for the first time he’d
learnt that he was losing money on sales of oil (something he didn’t seem too
upset about) and he was waiting until 9:30pm for the shop to shut so he could
work out what had made him the most money in the first financial day on record.
We took him to the pub to help make his waiting easier. The
establishment was so small that when we asked for 5 beers they didn’t have
enough in the fridge. As it turns out the place was actually a brothel so
perhaps beer wasn’t their primary focus (it’s only a small village, we haven’t
many drinking establishments to choose from!)
When I spoke to his volunteers about this shortly afterwards
they said that he had been some sort of financial records before we arrived…but
that he’d drawn flowers all over them so that you could no longer see the
numbers. Clearly the value wasn’t fully understood.
It makes me so happy to see someone gain the skills they
need to steer them well through their business life.
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