Mwanza is a modern city

Mwanza is a very modern city.

We have traffic lights (1 set, but we have them). They are so special that when you are in front of a red light you have about 10 minutes to admire them before they turn green. I heard for a lay missionary who has been living here for already 16 years that when the lights were installed people brought chairs out to sit and look at this world wonder.

We also have many ATM’s, sadly enough most do not work for our passes, and you should not try to get money at the end of the month when all the people have gotten their pay check and the lines at the ATM are easily an hour long or more.

We also have a drive in. This is really a drive in, not a drive through. You have to enter from the main road (a very busy one) and then later back out on this main road again. It is very entertaining if you happen to sit there for a meal.
We also have an airport, with good connection to Dar es Salaam, Arusha and Nairobi.

And we have some big electronic bill boards, including a really large one of about 4 by 8 meters

Language facts

Swahili is a language in motion. In Kenya you can see this clearly, there they speak English and Swahili intermixed. But even here in Tanzania where we speak the “real” Swahili, more and more English is popping up.

So you can hear things like: “facebook ni bure, unaweza kushare, kucomment” (= “facebook is free, you can share, comment”) of “tunashoot video” (“we shoot video”), naenda towni (I am going to town, while proper Swahili would “naenda mijini”)

But also many English words have gotten a Swahili version, for example:

Police à polisi

Hospital  à hospitali

Bycicle à baisikeli

Etc.

But be careful, I would think cheese à chizi, but this means crazy.

Challenges living in Tanzania

Living and working in Tanzania comes with a lot of challenges.

There are the normal ones, such as not having water, electricity or internet at regular intervals (actually not regular, you never know when it is going to happen).

And then there are other small (or big, depending on my mood that day) challenges. One of these is the people shouting “Mzungu” at you. It means as much as “white person”. I always have to tell myself that they usually do not mean it in a negative way, that I am the one who has a problem with it and not them. I am always reminded of a story an American lay missionary told me. She was in a car with a Tanzanian colleague when someone shouted Mzungu at her. She told her colleague how much this annoyed her. He was very surprised and asked her “what do you say when you walk in New York and you see a black man”? She told him “if I know him I greet him and if I do not know him I say nothing”.  He was surprised about this (just a little note, their argument does not really hold, as they do not say something to every black person they see in the street).

And then there is the challenge of working in a different culture with different beliefs. For example, people here believe in witchcraft. Ask Kabula, an albino girl that the SMA is taking care of, her arm has been chopped off because some nitwit thinks that this would bring him good luck, make him rich, ensures that he will win the elections, that he will get the woman of his dreams, etc.

And we have a boy of whom the parents say that he is bewitched by his grandmother who is a witch herself. They believe he is a grown man trapped in the body of a small child. The child himself states that he is a ‘follower of the lady of the lake’ and that he has to collect blood for he (he caused a serious accident). To me he is a boy with a mental handicap and a big trauma. But how to deal with this, you cannot tell people that their beliefs are nonsense, but on the other hand you cannot treat him as a witch either.

Luckily we have a good safety net her, there are several lay missionaries, and we have a nice group of SMA people who get along very well. Also it sometimes seems like half of the Netherlands is living in Mwanza, so you can go to them to sniff up some of the “normal” culture. You need this “expat” contact to be able to live her, to be able to let go and to realize that other people feel the same as you do. And also just for the famous Dutch “gezelligheid” (sorry guys, there is not really a translation fort his). I asked a Tanzanian colleague how they see friendship, and she answered me “if you can get something out of it”. Why put effort in something that does not give you any advantage. So they have friends during their time in college to study with, or alter friends who can help them get a job, etc. But just to go for a cup of coffee and a chat, for that they have the extended family.

Counseling and challenges

A child does not always tell the truth in counselling. They use different names, do not want to tell where their family is from, etc. It is a big challenge for our counsellors.

The children who are in Malimbe have to go home during the holidays. The idea is that usually it is possible for a short period for them to be at home, they will have become more resilient during their stay with us and the burden on the family is not so big. We want them to stay in contact with the family as our end goal is to reunite them at some point. However not everybody can go home, sometimes we really cannot find the family. This child will have to go to the Back Home House during the holidays. They are not always happy about this as they feel they do not belong with these street children.

A boy who has been with us a long time is facing this issue. Let’s call him Charley. His father is a refugee from Rwanda and cannot be found, his mother is a drunk who roams the street. Hem is always said when he has to go to BHH because, as he says with tears in his eyes “I do not have a family”.

 

Recently he told our counsellor that he could remember an aunty. He had mentioned before a family where his mother used to work, so the counsellor asked if she was really his aunty or if it was this family. No, he assured, it was really his aunty. So they went together to this family. They were welcomed with open arms. When the counsellor mentioned that she was bringing him home for the holidays the atmosphere changed. The boy was sent outside to play and then the lady told our counsellor that she is not related to the boy at all. It turned out that they were the family where his mother used to work. After our counsellor explained the situation and told them about how this boy really was looking forward to spending the holidays in a real family and how his behaviour had improved, they decided to open their house to him and keep him for the holidays. I was very happy when I heard this as the boy has a special place in my heart.

A different world

Even though I have been here some time I am still surprised when I hear the background of some of our boys. It is a world so far removed from mine.

There is for example one of our boys, let’s call him George, who lived with us in Malimbe. His family was not capable of taking care of him, both parents were alcoholics and there was not much money to look after the children.

After George finished his primary school education and was starting secondary school he told us that he would like to be with his family again. Thanks to intensive family counselling this is now possible. The parents finally gave up the booze and they do their best to look after their family. George, as oldest child at home, has in large part taken over the role of caregiver. So he not only goes to school and studies hard, he also looks after his younger brothers and sisters, he talks to his father if he is tempted to drink again, etc. Their living circumstances are not very good. Their house collapsed and they now live in a workshop of a welder. At the end of the workshop they made living quarters by using some cur by using some curtains. It is good to see how thanks to counselling this family is able to function again.

Also a common sight is children of one-parent households. Usually it is the man who runs off, he wants to have fun but not carry any responsibility. The woman often gets a new partner, but he is not always interested in looking after the children of a different man. Even if the children are not abused physically or kicked out of the house, they will be treated differently, get less food, have to do more chores, are not supported at home or in school (if they actually attend school), et, they will be treated differently, get less food, have to do more chores, are not supported at home or in school (if they actually attend school), etc. It is not difficult to understand why some children choose to go and live on the streets. They can do what they like, they usually are able to get enough money and/or food to survive, they form groups, they can play games in the video hall; all in all often a better life then at home (in their opinion)

Now it sounds like Tanzanians cannot take care of their children, but that is not the case. Do not forget that we work with a small part of society, that part which does not look after their children or does not look after them very well.

What surprises me most is that some parents do not seem to look for their children.  It is almost as if they think, good riddance, one mouth less to feed.

This is however only how it looks from the outside, many parents actually do look for their children, but they are not in position to search all over the country, so they will go to the local police station or village head, but not much more. Most of them are happy when they see their child again.

Luckily there are also other stories, like that of the old couple from the countryside around Mwanza. They came to town dressed their Sunday best (old clothes, but clean and reasonably in one piece). They used their last few cents on making copies of a school photo and on the bus fare. They went to all the children’s organizations in Mwanza, to the police, social welfare and asked if anybody had seen their son. They also asked if the social workers could take the picture with them when they went on street work to try and find him. Regrettably I do not know if they did.

Home visit

Already for some time I was moaning to the staff that I wanted to go on home visit, as I wanted to see this part of the work. Well they finally let me go during the school holidays, to bring one child home. Boy was I taught a lesson. I have developed a new found respect for the social workers/counsellors and staff.

We took a boy, let’s call him Juma Kurwa, home for the holidays. It was the first time in 3 years that he was going to his family (a bit of background, he used to live in Mwanza with his parents, his mother died and his father got really sick and could not look after him. The father’s family did not want to have anything to do with them as they were afraid of the illness. He was brought to Upendo Daima. The staff of UD kept in contact with the father on the streets during all this time. When the father suddenly was not to be found anymore, they came into contact with him again through one of his friends. It turned out that he had gotten better and returned to his family. When we contacted them there they were happy to hear about Juma and were looking forward to seeing him).

So we left one morning at 6am in the bus to Bukoba. We were joined in the bus by a preacher with a speaking impairment. He shouted for over an hour about “Jesu Kwisto” and “Hallelusja” (both not words in Swahili). I sat with my fingers in my ears (did not help) while thinking, how much do I have to pay to make him stop.

After 7 hours we were in Maleba where we changed to a daladala to reach the village we were going to. We took one into the mountains and then changed to another one, even further into the mountains. We finally reached the village where the family was supposed to live. We contacted some village elders, talked to the family on the phone and were finally giving instructions on how to get to their house. This involved taking a pikipiki (a motor taxi) for another 25 minutes through banana plantations.

 

The family was very glad to see him. We met the father, a brother, an uncle, an aunt, grandparents and a number of children. The reception was very welcoming. They showed us the land they were cultivating, their small houses, we got some dinner and we had a good conversation. It felt very good to leave him there for the holidays.

Then we left for Bukoba, it was about 5pm. According to the family we could walk to the road where we could get a daladala. But after 20 minutes, still no road in sight, but we spotted a pikipiki. We decided to take this one to the main road. So the two of us got on the back of the pikipiki and after 15 minutes we finally reached the road. There we took a daladala to Bukoba, or so we thought. After about 20 minutes it stopped in a village and told us this was the end, if we wanted to continue we had to take a pikipiki. So again on the back of one. This time 20 minutes down the hills on gravel roads. But also they turned out not to go to Bukoba. We had to take a car. We waited and when one came we got in the trunk and set on a crate of soda. After about 20 minutes I saw a sign indicating Bukoba to the left, but the car went to the right. It turned out we had to change again. The daladala we got into this time did actually take us to Bukoba where we arrived around 7pm. Then we still had to find a place to sleep and the next day travel back to Mwanza (a journey of 10 hours)

And just think, we were the lucky ones as we actually found the family. It sometimes happens that the family cannot be found because they moved or because the child does not remember correctly.