Ngara, TZ – Employee invests in a motorcycle – 9 Nov 2016

Last year, SODAT garden shop employee Shafan used his earnings from selling bananas to purchase a motorcycle. The motorcycle enables him to move quickly between work and his store, as well as to drive into town to get supplies for his store.

After his last corn harvest, he bought an additional acre of land from a neighbor. He is planting coffee, eucalyptus, and banana seedlings on the land for future harvests.

He has saved money to get electricity connected at his house, and also received a loan from Better Lives to expand his shop. Once he repays this loan, he hopes to request a larger loan to further expand the shop.

He has always been a hard worker with good personal financial sense. He built his family’s previous home by raising two piglets and eventually expanding his project to six full grown pigs, which he sold all at once when he built his house.

Shafan, 27, lives with his wife, Adventina, and their three children: Magret, 4, Samson, 2, and Martha, 2 months. He has worked for SODAT since they started their organic gardening program in July 2014. He appreciates having a steady income from the garden shop which allows him to invest money from farming into other income generating projects. Over the last couple of years he has slowly been investing in his small store in the center of Mukibogoye village. His wife works in it during the day when Shafan is working for the garden shop.