Sharing Development Across Borders

United Republic of Tanzania
Melissa Mongogna

I was in Louisiana working on the recovery efforts after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita when the most amazing opportunity innocuously came across my path. A co-worker who had worked for Habitat for Humanity was asked to go to Tanzania to build dorms for secondary school scholarship recipients.

I was envious. I had wanted to go to Africa my entire adult life and had a deep rooted interest in learning more about conflict situations and poverty drenched communities. Being a consummate student and self professed culture fiend who loves to learn how diverse communities accomplish similar things with different backgrounds and resources at their disposal, I have always been interested in the distinctiveness of life in Africa. Yet, I had no experience in construction so I was not sure how I would fill in for my Habitat friend who was invited to go over. But, I had moved often and tackled the unknown several times in my life, and I have never let an obstacle stand in the way of my passions. I knew if given the opportunity, I would find a way to make a difference. I just needed a reason and some guidance to feel comfortable uprooting my life yet again and heading off to East Africa.

Unsolicited, I sent the coordinator, Heidi Christ, my resume, hoping if I offered to volunteer my time, she could come up with something for me to do to help the project. She responded that she could use my work experience for a new project, WomenCraft, a new socially-responsible enterprise sponsored by the Anglican Church of Tanzania and the Government of the United Kingdom, in partnership with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. WomenCraft’s mission is to enable women from the Burundian refugee camps and the Tanzanian host community to develop a successful, fair-trade, handicraft-producing enterprise. The revenue generated will be used to pay its members a livable wage and improve the standard of living for their families and the larger community. Support services for the women, such as technical and life skills training, and a renovated progressive pre-school for the young children of the participants to attend were also on the agenda. My role was to renovate the pre-school and develop the school’s curriculum, policies and procedures.

I felt like I had won the lottery. Not only would I get to go to Africa, but I would get to work on a project that would use my skills and also challenge me to build upon them. It would combine my background in education policy, literacy and low income family issues with my field experience in teaching and assisting in recovery and human rights based projects. And seeing the UN in operation, after reading so much about it promise, its accomplishments, and its failures, would be fascinating. For me, it was an opportunity of a lifetime. I would not be a voyeur or tourist anymore, but a contributor to passions I held close to my heart.

My family was very used to me making spur of the moment decisions to contribute to work that was improving the lives of struggling people, so when I quit my job and told them that I would first donate 5 weeks of my time to work on a development project in Tanzania, they were supportive. They were naturally a bit nervous about the financial and personal risks, but I felt that I was the lucky one to have been offered the opportunity to expand my field experience and also learn directly from the continent and culture I had read so much about. So, I quit my job and planned to spend as much time as I could in Tanzania before my savings ran out.

When I arrived, I found Ngara to be very poor, very remote and to be the host community for 45,000 refugees. Ngara district is located in Kagera region, noted by the Government of Tanzania to be the most remote region from the administrative center of Dar es Salaam and the capital of Dodoma. Kagera’s geographic isolation is further compounded by poor roads and its location between the neighboring countries of Uganda, Rwanda, and Burundi in the north, west and by Lake Victoria on the east. This isolation, coupled with its poverty, has created an environment in which its residents have limited prospects for their future.

In Ngara district, the average income for a rural household with an average of 5.3 people is about $110 USD per year, with most households operating on a small-scale subsistence farming basis. With 33% of households living under the basic needs poverty line, Ngara has the highest percentage of impoverished households in the region. 78% of households in Ngara report to have faced problems in satisfying food needs during the previous year. The only cash crop in the area is coffee, which has been heavily affected by world market prices. The literacy rate in Ngara district is 49%, the lowest in Kagera region and compared to the national rate of 67%. [Tanzania-Netherlands Development Co-operation, Kagera Rural CWIQ, April 2004].

Lukole refugee camp, also in Ngara, hosts Burundian refugees who fled Burundi since 1993. There are also a substantial number of Burundian refugees who fled Burundi in 1972 and who sought refuge in Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo (then Zaire) before outbreaks of genocide and civil war, when they sought refuge in Tanzania. The situation faced by refugee and host community women is dismal: most have received little education, have never been employed outside the home, and are dependent on their husbands for economic and other support.

The refugee population in Western Tanzania, currently the 4th largest in the world, made the area where I was based, the recipient of a lot of international attention and aid, particularly following the 1994 Rwandan genocide. The aid had brought amenities not normally found in such a poor and remote area of a country, such as paved roads, better equipped hospitals, improved water and electrical systems, and the foundations of service groups benefiting the disabled or disadvantaged in the area (some who are now being run by local community members). It also had left a UNHCR office and compound where some local Tanzanians have found employment, in addition to a small expatriate community who continue to work for various aid organizations there.

During the five weeks I spent in Ngara, I learned more about myself and my work then I did traipsing around the world for the previous ten years. In Ngara, I found optimism, resourcefulness, patience, warm welcomes, and curiosity. This, combined with the simplicity of life, helped me to focus on my goals for the project. The project’s very experienced implementing partners also helped me realize what was actually attainable, given my timeframe and the resources of the community. The work was rewarding, and sometime instantaneous. Without traffic lights, TV, take out food, supermarkets, and other distractions that I had embraced back in the States, I was able to filter out the extraneous clutter and interact, listen, and learn from the people the project was created to benefit.

Even though I enjoyed walking everywhere because it exponentially increased my contact with “life” in Ngara, I was also sometimes frustrated by the slower pace of both travel and of work there. I was also occasionally frustrated by the lack of resources we take for granted here in America. However, I was always buoyed by the constant optimism in the face of such daunting and seemingly never-ending string of problems that those who lived and worked there year round tackled everyday.

There were many challenges standing in the way of achieving my project goals. PATMO Nursery School was in an incredible state of disrepair. Out of five classrooms in the school building, only one was in use and was crammed full with tiny desks. There was a chalkboard precariously balanced on a few of the extra desks, but there was only one book and no other instructional materials. There were a few decorative posters on the walls, but no water or electricity to the building. The teachers obviously cared about the students, but to say the kids were learning anything would be a stretch. The majority of the class could not identify alphabet sounds or letters, a basic first step in pre-school learning. They did seem to enjoy school time though, a great plus to achieving continuing education.

Therefore, my goal was to not only clean the filthy building, but to make it a true learning environment that the kids would be eager to go to everyday, challenged to learn within, and also proud of maintaining. Estimating that the women chosen to participate in the production house for WomenCraft would bring in another 60 children to the school, augmenting the number already taught at PATMO to 83, I decided to renovate 4 of the classrooms available.

With some help from the locals, we painted the entire building and colorfully decorated the walls with learning tools. We had shelves built by a local carpenter. The carpenter also constructed shapes and other counting manipulatives to use as education tools. My goal was to incorporate as many materials and ideas native to the Kagera region, so that the students would feel proud of their home and heritage. And, as they graduated to primary school, the children would be exposed only to local teaching tools and materials. Using only Western models and education tools might give them the impression that their own community’s ideas and materials were not good enough. Similarly, when it came time to build a curriculum for PATMO, I combined both progressive Western literacy class methods and Tanzanian primary school benchmarks.

I also worked together with local teachers to create a policy and procedures manual on school operations and came up with long- term plans to encourage the local community’s participation. We thought that installing a garden would not only help teach the children some useful basic farming techniques and local plant knowledge, but also encourage parental involvement in the school. The garden could also be used as a springboard for lessons about community, weather, biology, and nature and mathematics. We also solicited UNICEF to donate materials to provide the children with a playground so not only would the children’s minds be enhanced by their new surroundings, but gross motor skills, discipline, and fair play could be taught through structured play time.

My house was located between PATMO Nursery School and the local primary school. Therefore, every time I visited PATMO to paint or measure or simply watch the children, I had to pass a school yard full of energetic elementary school children. The sounds of play and laughter emanating from the courtyard were infectious. They quickly made me stop and say hello every time I passed. Soon they discovered I always had my digital camera in my pocket and thus began “demanding” that I take their picture. As soon as one would notice me walking down the path, they would shout to alert the entire play yard and every one present would begin impromptu performances to further entice me to snap away. After I snapped a few shots, they would all rush towards me to get a look at the display screen. First, they would point at one other, then hide their faces as they became consumed by shyness over their new celebrity, and finally laugh uncontrollably at the images of themselves on the screen. “Muzungu, take my picture!” still echoes through my mind when I see children playing on my street in Boston.

The children at PATMO Nursery school were more shy, but just as curious. I have plenty of memories of big eyes staring at me in hypnotic amusement as I would pull out a paintbrush to continue with the renovations. Almost in a trance, their fingers would find their way to whatever object I would be using to discover for themselves its purpose. The children had such a need to learn. It was plain to see that in the right environment, this energy could be harnessed to positively impact their education.

While I renovated the pre-school, I was also involved in planning for the implementation of WomenCraft. I enjoyed this development project because, to me, it could bring lasting change to the community. The more successful WomenCraft is, the more it will stimulate both the economy in Ngara and in the Lukole refugee camp by injecting more money and resources into the community. The more successful WomenCraft is, the more women they will be able to hire and the greater the number of beneficiaries in the community. Additionally, the more successful WomenCraft is, the greater the number of children that will start their schooling in a progressive learning environment. That is why this development program is so amazing; as if it succeeds there will be so many short term and long term benefits to its participants and to the families and communities as a whole.

As all children all over the world have, the children in Ngara have the inherent ability to be great learners, great consumers of knowledge, and also great producers of ideas. They could be an asset to their family and community, and possibly even to the larger society as well. They are simply children, no different on the inside and in their potential than any other. What differs is their access to the opportunity to cultivate those attributes so they could grow strong as leaders, learners, and citizens of the world.

My hope is that PATMO School will now be able to give its students: the skills and knowledge to improve themselves; discipline to work hard in a sometimes unforgiving environment; life skills knowledge to avoid the pitfalls of disease; confidence to resist negative temptations; and confidence to share their knowledge with their parents and community.

There is so much to learn from spending any amount of time in Ngara, both from the people who work there and those who were born there. Some UNHCR staff who I met that were originally from neighboring Rwanda had so much joy and pride to share with me about their home. Their perspective was not mired in sadness or animosity, but centered on hope for its future. Similarly, working the local stakeholders in the WomenCraft project, not only gave me confidence in the ingenuity of the local Tanzanians to overcome the problems endemic to the region, but also clearly expressed to me what pride they had in their way of life, of their many accomplishments in the face of so many obstacles and lack of resources, and of their infectious hope that things will continue to inch toward improvement.

In Ngara, you can never talk to enough people, see enough organizations at work, experience enough of nature, go to enough open markets, or see enough goats or cows on the road. Every day was a challenge, but in the best sense of the word. I have never felt more fulfilled or more at peace while being anywhere

else.