Last May I started selling enough fabric to pay each woman around $20/month. This might not seem like a significant amount of money but to them it is. One woman told me that she was using her money to pay her husband's hospital bill. Another woman told me that she was using hers to buy rice for their family.
When I got back from Canada last summer the ladies told me that they wanted to do a tontine. This is a method used to save money. Each month the women pool their salaries and then rip up small pieces of paper with their names on it. One woman gets all the salaries! I was helping to manage this but it got too confusing for me as some would say "I'm in two hands...I'm in one hand" which means that they would be contributing either half or all of their money to the pool.
Right now I just give the women their money and they organize themselves with the pool. They have invited several other women to be part of this tontine so that they can get more money. They would rather get no money one month and then get one month with a larger amount. If the women are not present for all their work days and do not have the amount of money that they promised to put into the pool then they are responsible for finding the means to do this-even if it means borrowing from others.
One of the things that I don't like about the tontine is that it makes me feel responsible for providing the women with their monthly salaries until the end of the tontine...ie...if there are eight women then they need eight months of work in order to fulfill their obligations. Right now I'm not sure how much longer I'm going to be able to do this...please pray for me to find someone who can help me manage this project. Right now the present tontine will be completed at the end of July. I am selling fabric and trying to make sure that I will have enough money to keep going until the end of July.
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