It's been a while since I blogged or e-mailed any customers & I do apologize for this & hope you will stick with us during these trying times in Zimbabwe. The biggest, most newsworthy event in Zimbabwe relates to the elections, the power-sharing agreement and more recently, the power-sharing disagreementc. Our emotions as a people have soared to hope & excitement, then just as quickly have spiralled downwards to despair & frustration since April 2008. Inflation is staggering at about 250,000,000% (or more by now) and I cannot even begin to imagine how people with no family overseas are coping. Overall it has been quite a horrendous ride & I'll take the so called poor US economy any day with its 2-3 inflation (or is it less??)
Anyway, you may wonder why what is happening in Zimbabwe is affecting Tashanda & I will try to explain. Firstly there were rumors that the international community was planning to ban exports from Zimbabwe - crafts included!! This left us in a state of limbo. What if we imported our products only to have them rejected at US based ports? So we had to wait it out and see.. and we are still waiting because the power sharing agreement is still under negotiation.
Secondly, while we wait things out, we've been developing our plan to develop the website to make it more user friendly and efficient, so we have not added any new products too our pages (sorry!). This is thanks to many of you who responded to our customer survey on www.tashanda.com. Hopefully within a month or so, you will see the new and more permanent Tashanda website.
Thirdly I've been getting creative and designing new products I hope to introduce over the course of the next year or so. Sounds like a long time to wait but given how slowly things move on the ground, this is how it will have to be.
I am stil looking for non-profits, individuals and or private businesses to partner with to carry out some of the initiatives, so if you are reading this and want to be a part of the African Arts & Crafts transformation, please let me know - financiers included!!
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