CWUHA PROJECTS IN TANZANIA, EAST AFRICA

With some of the financial help from BT, Alex Pearson, Chris Keggie and I - Heather Park set off on our journey to Moshi, Tanzania via Nairobi, Kenya on 29th June.

We were travelling to Moshi and surrounding villages to check on the progress of projects and to find possible future projects, also to help with the education of the children during our stay.

Kilima Hewa Village School
– Shiri Matunda Aged 3-7 x 100 children

The original schoolroom had been a spare room in the home of Mr. Masawee, a retired schoolteacher, now a maize farmer. Mr Masawee saw the need to provide education for the impoverished village children whose parents could not afford the state school fees. Because of the lack of facilities the number of children had to be limited.

CWUHA had already assisted previously in building a classroom so that more children could take advantage of the education.  This schoolroom was very quickly built and put into operation.  We purchased school books and desperately needed stationary, paper, pens, rubbers, rulers etc. whilst we were there.

During the year after the completion of the schoolroom Mr Masawee had sold some of his maize crop and used the proceeds to start building another classroom for children aged 7 - 11. He had a very hard decision to make this year. Should he use some of the profits of this year’s crop to finish off the room, thus depriving the children attending of their once daily bowl of porridge?  We said NO, depriving the children of this small amount of food was not an option. CWUHA would supply the finance to finish off the work, thus enabling him to take in more children.
St Andrews School, Moshi
Aged 12 – 17 x 35 children

The education of the children is held in a one roomed second floor building, backing on to a very noisy mechanics yard. The school relies on charitable donations and volunteer teachers to function. The Trustees decided to sponsor the education of ten children in 2006, then twenty more in 2007.

In St. Andrews school the teachers were hampered in their work by only having one text book per subject, so lots of blackboard work was the order of the day. It was decided that CWUHA should purchase one textbook per student for every lesson taught, this was to the delight of Andrew, the pupils and the teachers.

What surprised me more than anything was the respect we received from the students who all came from extremely underprivileged backgrounds; many of the children have no parents or were street children and had no means of paying for their education.

Chris and I dropped in on the school one evening to find that pupils had stayed behind just to study the new textbooks. This was truly inspiring, their motivation and dedication to learn and work hard in an attempt to lift them from poverty was very humbling.

Andrew was also under great pressure to pay two months rent for the school and the salaries of the teachers who had not had any wages for many months. We all agreed to take this problem back to a CWUHA trustees meeting convened on our return. The money to cover all Andrews’s costs was agreed and dispatched within two days of our arrival in England.

 

Mama Lucy Bomangombe Kilimanjaro Childrens Foundation
100 children aged 1-17

We were introduced to Mama Lucy, the Tanzanian version of Mother Teresa.

Mama Lucy took in all unwanted children (many Masai children) into her ram shackled home which had grown into a sanctuary and a place of simple education. We purchased a large amount of food from the local market, rice, salt, flour, fruits and vegetables etc.
Just as important we bought sweets for all the children, unknown to us we had bought lollipops with whistles in the sticks which came in handy for all the singing and dancing that took place that afternoon.

Mama Lucy also sends 38 of the older children to school.
When asked what she needed mostly Mama Lucy replied, “New mattresses” to replace the stained ones on the homemade bunk beds where up to four or five children slept. We said we would consider helping on our return. The CWUHA trustees in England, again agreed to send the money in order to assist Mama Lucy’s unheralded work.

Whilst visiting Mama Lucy’s I met a young Masai girl called Neema, Neema now 9 years old had been abandoned at birth on Mama Lucy’s doorstep. Neema is mentally and physically handicapped. She is pushed around daily in confines of a yard on an adapted wheelchair with a patio chair seat sat on the remains of wheelchair workings. Thanks to Parcelforce we were able to ship a wheelchair fit for purpose for Neema with lots of comfort for her frail body.

 

Kawaya Masai Village – Hai District
Population 2,999

We were not finished yet. Dogo took us even further into the interior to a Masai village. We were grateful that we were being driven in a sturdy 4x4 vehicle as most of our journey seemed to be spent driving along dried up riverbeds.

On our arrival to the centre of the village, a once a week market was in progress. Magnificent Masai warriors greeted us with a lot of very strong bone crushing handshakes.

A town council meeting was also in progress and we were invited to join. The chairperson of the town council (Michael Ohomi) explained that this market area was the epicentre of village life and that it covered many hundreds of square miles. The nearest state school or hospital was over 60 kilometres away. As a result many people died from dysentery, the local river was contaminated and last year cholera was epidemic, due to the hospital being miles away many women also die while giving birth.

He took us to a shell of a building, the men of the Masai village had built this in two weeks and it was meant to be a health clinic, a previous charity had donated the bricks and then abandoned the project. In our eyes this was very cruel to give these poor people hope and then take it away. The leader explained that for a small amount of money, the clinic could be quickly finished by local labour. The government would then send medical staff to man the clinic on a regular basis.
Kawaya Masai Village School

We were then taken to the village school which catered for the education of 600 children, some of them walking up to six hours a day for the privilege. The school had six classrooms, 100 children per room with one textbook per subject per room.

On our return to Moshi we asked Dogo, that if the CWUHA decided to provide the money for Mama Lucy, the clinic and the text books would he be prepared to facilitate the purchase of the goods and to oversee the building work? He said that he would be more than willing as he had been born in a similar village, he had been a street child and health and education had given him opportunities, he would like to be able to offer these people the same.

During the little spare time that we had, we managed to take out all of the pupils at St. Andrews school for a lunch of chicken and chips. Normally the students worked through breaks and lunchtime as they had no food due to lack of funds. We also had the chance to teach simple English and sums to Mr. Masawee’s pupils. We had great joy taking part in an international football match with the little ones and tried to teach them simple rhymes without being able to speak Swahili.

Sarah Lloyd a teacher in the UK who had previously given a presentation at the 2006 HA AGM is once again teaching the pupils of St. Andrews during August. Her airfare was also paid for out of the money provided by BT. Sarah also has the added responsibility of supervising the spending of the charities money on the projects described above.

 

All of these projects were taken back to England, discussed and agreed. The money has been transferred to bank accounts of trusted people, in Moshi.

Heather Park