$70,000 a year degree for $400 wages

Hey girl heey!!!

So, it’s the first time I’m talking about money up in these streets and as I mentioned on the Instagram post hyping this fact, it’s super scary for me! I feel like once you get to know how I make and spend my money I’d be super exposed and our relationship would change somehow. You’d say something like “all that noise for $400.” 😂 But I’m sure it’s all in my head and you’ll still love me after this anyway -you will love me right?-lol😂. Plus, I think some of my personal finance choices might actually be helpful for you -she says humbly- considering there isn’t much Afrocentric (or more Tanzanian) personal finance content out there. So let’s dive in, shall we?

Let me start by addressing the title of this post. Yes, $70,000 a year is actually how much my degree cost 😂. And it was actually a 4-year degree so that’s a total of $280,000 give or take. That’s not even counting the $30,000 a year high school I went to for two years. Before you assume I’m some sort of billionaire’s baby -or sugar baby- let me disclose the fact that I’m a proud -poor African- scholarship baby. Now, do I sometimes wish someone could have given me that money to start a business with instead? Totally, yes! But were these academic experiences worth it? Absolutely!

You see, the promise that such an expensive education gives you is that it’ll make you an invaluable member of any organization. And I actually think it does deliver on that promise. But, not in a way that directly translates to you being paid a lot. It just means that your employer will value your contribution, whether or not they’ll compensate you accordingly is another conversation altogether. Depending on where in the world you choose to work, the industry you get into, the role you get in the organization and the generosity of your employer, you may actually end up grossly underpaid. So, when you read that University website page where they say “Where Our Alumni Work” and share these glossy testimonials, take it with a pinch of salt. The glamourous locations and institutions aren’t always guaranteed! 

I, as you may already know, chose to come back home to Tanzania immediately after graduating from University. I was lucky to have graduated with a job offer in hand. The job promised me $680 take-home (that’s $1,000 gross if you care). I don’t know about other markets but that’s a pretty darn good salary for an entry-level job here. Especially because the job came with so many other benefits. For context, below were some of those benefits:

• Airtime allowance

• Fully furnished apartment

• Free Utilities (Electricity, Gas and Water)

• Three meals per day

• Transport to and from work

• Laundry and housekeeping services

• A flight to and from home 3 times a year

• Plus a generous paid annual leave time

Pretty good right? I looked at all those benefits and the pay, did my math and said, if I work really hard and double my pay in two years, I’d be able to at least make $30,000 (the equivalent of my one year of high school fees) in three years. Not too bad for a person earning in TZS! But because this world isn’t my own, 😂 I’m now at the year two mark of post-University and I’m actually getting paid less than I did in my first job because of #COVID-19 and other life factors. 

Here is the promised cringe-worthy moment 😬lol! 😂: I now only earn a stipend of $435 per month. And that’s not even the funniest part! The real joke is that I’ve not even been able to make $15,000 in these two years yet 😂. Unless I count the freelance work and internships I’ve done, which would bring my work experience up to 3 years and total money earned just above the $18,000 mark. 

But hey, let’s step away from the numbers for a second and consider the actual work. I’ve actually been so blessed to do some very meaningful work in this time period. You can check my LinkedIn profile for details (also recommend me for some jobs while you’re there because clearly I need the salary upgrade 😂). On top of that, I’ve had global exposure at unimaginable scales; literally lived, worked and studied in 7 different countries in 7 years. Not to mention I’m often told how absolutely great I am at what I do because I’m a quick study and actually put in the work. So I’m confident my pay is not a reflection of not being valued or not being competent, it’s simply a matter of circumstances. 

And so, how can I reconcile these global exposures, expensive world-class knowledge and my low wage? Simple, I ADJUST! Well, maybe not so simple. 

After sleeping in five-star hotels and having dinner with billionaires, you don’t just move back to your hometown to your furniture-less room without feeling a pinch. I felt the pinch -more like a bite really. My ego was bruised! I felt entitled to a better pay. That I deserved to be one of those exemplary graduates whose jobs post-graduation made it to the “Where Our Alumni Work” page. But, then again, the world -or even my alma mater- doesn’t owe me anything 😂. I’m just lucky to have had those experiences.

With that in mind, I thought to myself, how can I make the best of these experiences? How can I live my now ordinary life in an extraordinary way considering all the privileges and knowledge I’ve collected over the years? And the answer has mostly been in the following five personal finance rules I now live by:

1. DON’T CONVERT THE AMOUNT ACROSS CURRENCIES

   ... unless you wanna get a heart attack, then by all means. Because the fact of the matter is, in my employer’s books, I get paid 1 million Tanzanian shillings, not $435. 1 million sounds so much better than 435 right? And in some ways it is! Because while $435 barely gets you anything in the US, it goes a long way here - click here to see a comparison. So, if you are earning in Tanzanian shillings, count, budget, and spend your money in Tanzanian shillings. And if you really must compare, compare the purchasing power, not the value because my $435 here easily affords me a middle-income lifestyle. 

2. LIVE WITHIN YOUR MEANS

   This is a big one! I hate to say it but if you can’t afford it, you can’t have it! And perhaps this is another reason why not to convert your money across currencies. I remember when I just got back to Tanzania I’d go places and see a hairstyle priced at $21 (TZS 50,000) and I’d think to myself, ah, it’s just $21. But the truth of the matter is $21 is equal to the amount I’d spend on a month’s worth of groceries here and it’s 4.8% of my income. Considering maybe I’d want to do my hair twice in a month, that’s almost 10% of my pay going to beautifying dead cells. But then again, maybe doing my hair is really important to me, in that case, I’d need to budget my money well enough to accommodate this expense. There! I said it! You need a BUDGET -especially when you aren’t earning a lot! I’m very honest with myself about what’s important to me and what isn’t and I assign $ value to them in my budget in order of importance. That way, I know what I can afford and what I can’t and STICK TO THEM. 

3. SUPPLEMENT YOUR INCOME -IF YOU CAN 

   It’s straightforward if you wanna spend more, earn more! This can be in form of a profitable #sidehustle that gives you extra cash, generous material donations from your family (thanks dad for always bringing me fish and mommy for growing plantains) or even a sugar daddy/mommy who pays for your rent 😂 -listen, no judgment here.

4. UPSKILL

   Ideally for free because what would be the point of finding other ways of spending money you don’t have 😂 So yeah, find opportunities to learn because that just sets you up for a better-paying opportunity. What you know now will only get you a job like the one you have, what you learn is what helps you pivot. So, grow your value, grow your worth. I’m currently learning Data analysis and visualization.

5. KEEP LOOKING FOR YOUR NEXT OPPORTUNITY 

   And this doesn’t necessarily mean moving outside your current organization. You can actually look for opportunities within because chances are you’ll always be able to negotiate an increment when you move. No one rewards you for being good at being stationary in your career 😂 But don’t just move for the sake of moving! Move intentionally and into roles that actually grow you because then you’ll rack up even more knowledge for the next role and the next role. 

That’s it! That’s how I’m reconciling my $70,000 a year degree with my $435 stipend. 

In my next post, I wanna share how I actually spend my $435 as a young and fun-loving person in Dar es Salaam. Stay tuned! 

In the meantime, share your thoughts in the comment section below because I really wanna know if I’m the only one out here trying to make sense of their education vs income ratios. 😀

Love,

Bernie

Urban babe in the bush: a not so secret aid worker

Gasp! I traded in my American OPT and turned down a great fellowship program in South Africa for a job in the middle of nowhere Tanzania. Sounds ridiculous, but deep down in my heart, I knew I wasn’t going to be fulfilled anywhere else but home in Tanzania. And if it meant going back home to a bush, so be it.

So here I am, after 6 years in exile, overlooking the Serengeti plains from a window. I knew my hundreds-of-thousand-dollar degree would take me places, but I didn’t imagine it would bring me to a job in the Serengeti.

Yet here I am, an urban babe in the bush!

I’m working at a nonprofit organisation committed to wildlife conservation and community development work in the western corridor of the Serengeti ecosystem. This wasn’t an easy decision! I had my reservations. See, I took this job because I’d been doing “development work” in other countries on the continent and beyond and I really wanted to do the same at home. However, over the years I’d begun to doubt that nonprofit organisations -especially ones started by foreigners- could really achieve sustainable development at scale. I felt that it’s necessary for “locals” to be involved in development work for real and lasting change to happen. Because you can’t ignore how when foreigners come to Africa to do “development work” it eerily parallels colonialism.

And then there is the truth that no organisation is built to die. They’re all built to last. So, what does it mean for an organisation that’s trying to solve a problem to last? The problems it’s trying to tackle must continue, isn’t it? So, it’s not unfounded that one ought to be sceptical of organisations doing development work and the purity of their intentions. And so the question is, does the addition of people like me, “locals”, in these spaces, make a difference?

I want to believe that yes, it does — but I honestly don’t think it’s always the case. It’s not enough to just add some local voices in the mix, we really ought to sprinkle some radical feminist critique on how the work itself is being done. I believe it’s important for everyone who works in this field, including myself, to critically analyse their own positionality. At some point, one needs to scrutinize the ways they’re contributing to the conditions that lead to there being a need for “development work” to begin with. We must be cautious of deeming ourselves faultless-do-gooders while we find self-fulfilment in delivering material excesses, to a few people on the “other side,” while residing comfortably in our zones of abundance.

Barbara Heron, in her book, “Desire for Development: Whiteness, Gender and the Helping Imperative,” makes a point on this matter that may help in the self-assessment. She argues that the very identity and role of a development worker are inscribed with entitlement and superiority complexes that can be traced to colonial constructions of bourgeois identities. She makes a case for a sober de-romanticised perception of the development worker. Development work for Heron is neither noble nor innocent but rather a colonial continuity that has shape-shifted to fit neoliberal moralities. My and her scrutiny of entities or persons doing “development work” however, isn’t malicious but rather warranted by this understanding of development work.

Neither Heron, nor I can be the judge and jury on this matter, so I focus on my own complicity in choosing to be a development worker. Trust me at no point did the irony escape me. I constantly question the way my choice may reflect an internalised colonial bourgeois mentality. I ask myself, “have I, as Maya Angelou puts it in her book “All God’s Children Need Traveling Shoes” become a “Beentoo? Have I been consumed by my own experiences and relative privilege to the point of seeing myself as superior to my fellow Tanzanians, dubbing myself a bringer of development?”

While the possibility that I too have become complicit in hierarchical structures that create the development worker imperative eats at me, I still need work -a girl needs food on her plate after all! Plus, I also still believe that there’s a need to include beneficiaries of development in the work that’s meant to serve them. Even though I’m not the benchmark of who development is for -considering my relative privilege and all- I feel it necessary for a liminal person like me to be in this space anyway. And yet, I can’t say that without feeling guilty of buying into the nobility politics that give me the license to march into these communities to “help” them. But we can’t dwell in self-critique! At the end of the day, someone needs to do the work! Plus, am I also not, in so many ways, a product of other people’s development work anyways? I’m a classic case of the save-a-poor-African-child trope by way of scholarships and financial aid.

So, I try to not let this inner turmoil distract me from seeing the value this experience may bring for me personally, and as a contributing member of society. Besides, I’m not claiming single-handily changing anything here, but I am carving out space for self-development and potentially upliftment of a community. My heart is in the right place, that oughta count for something!

As I negotiate space within and beyond this organisation, I commit to constantly reflect on my own positionality and the ways I may be complicit in perpetuating underdevelopment.

We’ll see how it goes.

Sincerely,

Bernie

an urban babe in the bush