TAN-EDAPS - Maji ya Chai

Tom Miles January - February 2009

I am writing this sitting in my office in Leicestershire looking out of my window at a grey cloudy and cold day. Only a couple of weeks ago I was in Maji Ya Chai, a village about an hours daladala ride from Arusha, looking out of my office window onto the garden with a laden pomegranite tree in full 36 degrees C sunshine.

It all started with a mid life crisis. An ambitious plan to throw in everything I have, and head off around the world by motorbike, condensed into an achievable aim of a six week adventure with the spin off benefit of doing something worthwhile for my fellow man. After much internet searching I discovered Mondo Challenge and duly headed down to Newbury to find out what opportunities they might be able to offer. I was willing to go anywhere in the world where I could do something useful in a 6 week period starting in January. This is a time when I could get away from my business without too much damage. After a very useful chat Tanzania became my chosen destination. I confess that I knew almost nothing about the country! The main reasons I chose it were that it offered a chance to help with business development as opposed to teaching and that I was told working there was a challenge…red rag to a bull!

Arrival

To be perfectly honest I did not have any idea what I was going to do in Tanzania until I got there. There had been a lot going on in my life in 2008 and I had decided to leave this adventure to fate. (If you are not so trusting to fate as I was, I strongly suggest more in depth research before you go.)

Reading back through my journal (thanks to my girlfriend Clare for suggesting I write one) I see I was very surprised how easy everything was. I promise I have not succumbed to African corruption when I say that Mondo Challenge do a good job for the money. No hassle in Nairobi, the bus leaving for Arusha from almost outside the hotel door. Friendly helpful people everywhere. (I found that throughout my time in Tanzania polite greetings in Kiswahili followed by firm but friendly refusal to buy the product or service I did not want, led to some lively and interesting banter about life in general on the streets of Arusha or wherever.) The induction process was not as painful as it sounds and the first few days melted away all but two of the main apprehensions I had. The BIG ones still were ‘What am I actually supposed to do? And am I capable of doing it’?

The moment finally arrived when I travelled with Leonard from the Mondo office to meet my boss and homestay host Mr Mafie. We met at his office in Maji Ya Chai. (Usa River is the next town and can be found on Google Earth) I was received like a long lost brother which did not do anything to lessen my apprehension about living up to expectations! Over the first of many many sodas (any fizzy drink EXCEPT beer) Mr Mafie completely overwhelmed me with ‘development babble’ terms I was soon to become very familiar with: Capacity Building, Economic Development Group (EDG) Facilitate, Core Values. Etc.

Let me digress at this point. I mentioned earlier a mid life crisis. Perhaps two years ago I will admit to possibly pre-judging people a little too easily. (loud snorts from ex wife if she read this…luckily she wont) I have learnt not to do this these days, although I have to keep reminding myself! In my previous less enlightened Neanderthal incarnation I probably would have written off Mr Mafie and told him what I thought of him after the first hour of his very long and complicated explanation of the philosophy behind his NGO called Tan-Edaps. Luckily or in Mafie’s view due to Gods intervention I listened and patiently asked questions.


The Homestay

It was with a mixture of confusion, intrigue and apprehension that I headed off up the valley to the village of Ngyeku and Mr Mafie’s house. There was quite a bit of animated chatter in Kiswahili between the taxi driver and my fellow passengers. I do not know what they were saying but the appalling state of the unmade road may well have been of relevance. Cars rarely ventured up this way. I was soon to become intimately acquainted with every little bump of this road as I travelled up and down it on the back of Mr Mafie’s Honda 125 (Clare christened Mafie as Ted ...me being Ralph …for those of you who watch The Fast Show)

Chez Mafie was more civilised than I had imagined it would be. It would not have looked out of place in the Alps. It has views of Mount Meru and Killimanjaro. My bedroom had an en suite toilet!! This was effectively a ‘wet room’ that will one day have a working shower. There was a living / dining room and another couple of bedrooms. The ‘kitchen’ was in an outbuilding. I met Mama Mafie who has the wonderful christian name Happiness and her 2 daughters Neema aged 13 and Esther age 11. All three of these ladies worked extremely hard to look after me. I use the word ladies for the children out of respect. If it was not for their size and the very occasional fun and laughter they had with other children you would think they were adults. They helped their mother with farm work, house work and cooking. They cleaned my shoes and did my washing. **see comments later.

The house did not have mains electricity, we did have a simple solar power system that gave light in a couple of rooms for an hour or so in the evening. All cooking and water heating was done over wood fires contained in simple stoves in the kitchen. I soon began to look forward to my evening bucket of scalding hot water that I could dilute with cold to pour over myself using an old Blueband margarine tub. Luxury. We were on the end of the water supply pipe and so often it had all gone before it reached us! The Mafies had a couple of cows for milk. A calf was born when I was there. Half a dozen goats were led out to the fields each morning. Hens foraged about for food. They have a couple of acres for Maize, Sunflowers or Cowpeas. Often more than one crop in the same field. They had organic vegetable beds and on the hillsides Bananas…sweet and savoury, Mangoes, Cassava, Coffee, Papaya, Passion Fruit, Lemons and Oranges amongst trees growing for firewood. The land is fertile given enough water.

My Work

After breakfast of boiled egg with ndise (baked savoury bananas) chai (tea made with milk) and on good days chapatis we would roll Ted’s bike out of the house and set off down the valley. Restrained acknowledgements were shared with the many people walking, cycling or accompanying donkeys. More energetic waves were exchanged with children either on the road or in the adjacent fields. By the end of my stay I was on ‘waving terms’ with hundreds of people! After a brief sprint along the main Arusha to Moshi highway we would arrive in Maji Ya Chai and the Tan-Edaps office. Our neighbour would usually be in the yard either cooking or attending to her baby. She did not appear to have an indoor cooking area so I am not sure how she coped in the rainy season! The office had no glass in its windows and so various sounds would drift in on the breeze. Children at play, donkeys braying, African wrap or reggae from next door at BIG volumes or sometimes in late afternoon we got the sound of choir practice at the ultra flash, tinted glass, brand spanking new Lutheran Church around the corner. They were very good.

As I said earlier I was not at all sure about Mr Mafies NGO at the beginning. After a couple of weeks digesting the information I gleaned from him and visiting many people in all areas of the community I realised that Mr Mafie is a very good man with some very sound ideas. He has good links with the key ‘movers and shakers’ in Government, the Church, schools and farmers / business people in general. What he lacked was focus, business skills, contacts, a plan and possibly most importantly a realistic vision for the future capabilities of his NGO. Not much work for me to do then!

To cut 6 weeks of solid work short for the sake of keeping the reader awake I feel that I had achieved more than I would have ever thought possible. I had helped Mr Mafie to set realistic targets for Tan-Edaps, facilitated a new website, started a structured approach to capacity building, initiated a networking program and re-structured the organisation to allow Mafie to access opinions from key contacts more easily. I wrote clear summaries for his project proposals and re-wrote the Tan Edaps philosophy and mission documents so they could be understood more clearly. I decided that as I had started so many things moving I should remain in touch. I regard myself as an unofficial employee. I managed to get involved in many projects from trying to supply electricity to Ngyeku , using donkey power to collect rubbish, building an orphanage, expanding broiler chicken production, making soap, planning an infant daycare centre and visiting women with HIV to check how they were coping with microfinance loans. All in all a fantastic experience.


** Women of Tanzania

I would like to take this chance to comment on the inspirational women I met in Tanzania. I got to know Mama Mafie, Esther and Neema from my homestay. I guess they would be typical of women in a stable family group. They worked tirelessly and without any complaints that I was aware of. However I was told that myself and Mr Mafie were the Babas (Fathers) of the household. We were the ‘bread winners’. It was the women’s role to look after us. Mr Mafie and I ate our meals at the dining room table. The ladies ate separately in a bedroom. The women did all but the most physical of tasks on the farm. Work began at 5.30 and finished after I went to bed at 10pm or so. In all honesty I think that if they really knew how inefficient and unproductive most men are during the ‘hard day at the office’ they would feel very betrayed.

Most incredible were the single mums I met, many with HIV/AIDS. The sheer guts and determination of these women to raise their children with self generated resources is just fantastic. I think it is my time talking to these women that is my single most cherished memory from Tanzania. I am proud to still be in contact with three such ladies, and I am sure that any resources in terms of finance or knowledge I send them will be multiplied many times in benefit to their communities. I am afraid to say I am not quite so confident that the same can be said for many of the men.

Women of Tanzania. You have my respect.