Usa River & Kikatiti Small Grants Project

Caroline Pallister March - May 2009

After almost 2.5months I am coming to the end of my time in Tanzania and, together with the local volunteers, I am buying the chickens, animal feed and goats for the last few of our grant recipients. I’ve been setting up a new Small Grants Project to assist people affected by HIV/AIDS and have been lucky enough to be able to take the project from start-up to final handover into the community. This has meant doing a feasibility study (assessing whether there is potential to start up new businesses in our target area and identifying whether there are people affected by HIV/AIDS to run them), doing family visits and interviews, followed by final selection of 9 successful applicants, business training (fortunately done by our one of our able Community Volunteer Co-ordinators as it is in Swahili), formal business launch with local community leaders and then buying goods to the value of the grant.

The photo shows our grant recipients together with the ward and village executive officers and the Tanzanian Country managers on launch day – an excellent turn-out and the grant recipients were delighted. Local hierarchy is very important here. Finally there is weekly follow-up to support the people running the new businesses. I’ll manage to fit in one of these follow-up visits before I leave, but it will be done on an on-going basis by the two local Community Volunteers who we have recruited as part of the project. They in turn will be looked after by a local Community Volunteer Co-ordinator employed by MondoChallenge. So as long as the funding for the Community Volunteers and Co-ordinators continues, the project is now almost totally sustainable locally (aside from the managerial support of our lovely and very excellent Tanzania Country Manager of course!). It’s great to think that we have contributed something that can now stand on its own two feet.

The whole experience of being in Tanzania has been great – from the extreme hospitability and generosity of my homestay family, to the crazy daladalas (minibuses) that eventually take me to work, to the dedication of the local people making time to work on the project even though they need to also fit in earning money to pay the school fees and maybe one day finish building the family home. To their patience and amusement when I have ‘English’ moments and demand that the taxi I have hired at great expense should indeed come with the petrol for which we have paid. And that it should turn up in less than 30mins from being ‘immediately available’. And to the amazing safari parks, walking country and the 5,000 year-old cave paintings in Kolo (definitely worth a visit if you get the chance). To the bustling markets and friendly haggling about the ‘special price’ that people might just try to charge you. And to the Masai families continuing to live in their traditional ways with multiple goats and wives. And to the difference that we hope to make to the families living in maybe one room with four children – and their happiness at the opportunity to make a better living for themselves.

Longido Primary School - Longido

John White January - July 2009

The Maasai people, so visible in East African tourist literature, are ubiquitous in Longido. It is one of their strongholds. Their bright blue and red and purple cloaks bring a splash of colour to a parched hinterland of ashen scrub punctuated by green acacia trees, then turn spectral by dusk as they move around the sandy streets of the village. The men carry spear-like sticks; the women may have young children strapped to their backs; often too they carry buckets of water which, until recently, had been strictly rationed to two buckets per family per week.

We are supposed to be in the middle of the rainy season, or the ‘long rains’ as they call it here. Yet our anoraks and umbrellas lie unused in the bottom of our cases. Not much grows in Longido. Cattle have been taken to pastures further afield and the herdsmen have gone with them. Yet there is much activity: birds build nests; mongoose colonies keep watch on the termite mounds; donkeys bray and kick each other; and buffalo graze on the upper slopes of the mountain behind us. And the humans are also nesting. Just two weekends ago we attended a local wedding. It wasn’t quite as exotic as you might imagine: churches are the same everywhere, though in Tanzania with noisy brass bands and colourful wigs. But the cutting of the ‘cake’ was a new experience, the cake in question being a spit-roasted goat with the fur left intact on its head and a huge sprig in its mouth. Every day here brings a new adventure.

Most days, of course, we are in school, Longido primary School, an establishment with almost 900 pupils on roll. There are not enough teachers - there never are in Tanzania – but the class sizes are not as bad as some I’ve seen; and the children are a delight to teach. There is no electricity or running water (just as in Longido village more generally), but this isn’t an unusual problem in Tanzania. There are at least some text books, and you quickly learn to adapt: oral/aural approaches work well, as do display cards, pictures, anything to break the monotony of ‘chalk and talk’.

Teaching methods are definitely traditional. Given the conditions and the curriculum, that’s hard to get away from. But the staff are welcoming and receptive. Dee and I have both done some team teaching, while Dee has been giving English lessons to a female colleague. I’ve also been taught how to do Braille by a blind teaching colleague, one of three such in a school that has a small blind unit attached. By Tanzanian standards, it’s something of a beacon school. Oh, and I’ve yet to see any evidence of corporal punishment!

Life for many people in this district is harsh. The term ‘weight-watchers’ has a whole new meaning here. One weekend recently, working with members of an NGO that monitors health using WHO guidelines, we were shocked to find that all but 4 of the 60 young children measured (height and weight) were malnourished, 6 of them in the ‘critical’ category. Back home, some of these children would be in hospital. Here, the emphasis is on ensuring they attend and are fed in school. Knowing this sort of thing tempers any small gripes we might have about living conditions here. Transport is erratic, but most of the time we don’t need it; and the shops are not well stocked. But we have more than most people enjoy, including a stand-up (cold) shower and two and a half hours of electricity each evening provided by a generator. Accommodation is simple but adequate, and we would probably feel uncomfortable with better, if that makes sense.

This Longido placement is our third as volunteers and our second with the Mondo organization. As a married couple, Dee and I had half-expected that we might be left to our own devices, or have a quiet time. No chance!! Expect to be invited to the home or ‘boma’ of your new acquaintance. And to his or her church. Also weddings, obviously. Or you may even end up enjoying a cup of chai together, watching the rolling clouds that seem to go on forever. The previous Mondo volunteer in Longido talked of this place being the heart of Africa. It is a very big heart.