My last two entries were optimistic. That’s largely because I’ve had the good fortune of developing friendships with many of the most innovative and persistent people in the region. Today, we continued the work we’ve been doing with WOMEDA, which involves developing a better understanding of women’s rights and women’s concerns in the region. We use approaches to research that are driven by WOMEDA’s local perspectives and concerns, and that provide opportunity for detailed feedback from local women. In addition to serving women, WOMEDA also provides resources to Most Vulnerable Children (MVCs).

During the morning the Director of WOMEDA, Juma Massissi, took us to two homes that received water harvesting systems through our work last year. The rain drops on the metal roofs, moves toward the aluminum gutters, and is directed into a large black tank that is situated alongside the house. In a region where school and workdays are perpetually interrupted with the need of walking great distances for water, water harvesting is a simple and (not in US terms, but in Tanzanian) rather inexpensive solution. We’re able to provide a house a water harvesting system for about $400.

The tank recipients greeted us with great enthusiasm and honor. They scolded Juma for bringing us by without giving them time to prepare food to share. They arranged straw mats for us to sit on, shared coffee beans as a symbol of friendship, and told us how the tanks had freed up time for their children to attend more school and for them to spend more time on their farming. I thanked Juma for helping us see the fruits of the previous year’s efforts, but encouraged him to take us to new locations in the afternoon. Only through talking with clients of WOMEDA who we haven’t yet met will we be able to document a more robust understanding of women’s rights in the region.
We arranged two vans and moved north and east from Kayanga. There’s only ten kilometers of paved road in Karagwe, so we were away from it in minutes. Dust clouds rolled up behind us as we followed a ridge perpetually connecting small villages to one another. Bundles of long grasses were arranged along the road for sale. They are used for mulching among the banana trees. The houses were sometimes hard brick, sometimes a locally-made brick composed of a mud mixture and baked in a caked-mud oven before becoming something of an adobe building material, and often a combination of sticks, banana bark stretched into rope, and mud.

After forty-five minutes of throwing dust into the air and creeping down and up the ridgeline, we stopped in front of one such mud home. We had prepared interview question sets for men and for women, but this home of seven children was headed by the oldest, a seventeen-year-old boy. He received support and assistance from his fifteen-year-old sister. They tried to care for their younger brothers and sisters – and they did receive support from WOMEDA. But they were in extreme poverty. WOMEDA had a program that provided malaria nets and bed sheets, but they have no beds. Their clothes were full of holes. The oldest boy was suffering from something – some thought malaria. He did have malaria medication, but didn’t have the sense that it was working. They walked three kilometers each way to fetch water – for drinking, for cooking, and for washing. The seven of them lived together in a small house no bigger than most one-car garages in the US.

While this family was deemed one of the most vulnerable of WOMEDA’s clients, and will therefore be receiving a water tank and harvesting system through our partnership, for me the most challenging thing is not having met this family. It is rather knowing that this family’s story and experience is reproduced countless times in the region. That knowledge, coupled with the awareness of the kind of dynamism local people show when given the most basic of opportunities, is what drives Amizade and Amizade’s many employees and supporters. Through cooperating with and supporting local organizations, we can help plant some of the seeds of success. We can play a small part in making an opportunity-enabling, empowering investment in a home or community. To ignore these kinds of small – and demonstrably successful – opportunities is to ignore humanity.