With some two million orphans in Tanzania, from my arrival in Dar es Salaam it was not difficult to start working. After visiting the Ministry of Information of Tanzania and getting my official temporary press card to help me along in case the police stopped to question my work, I was ready to visit an orphanage 40km north of the capital.
Through out my stay in Tanzania I have been meeting with intelligent and independent women who have been helping me with research and access. Their presence from day one changed my perception of Tanzania. Though a very religious country, Tanzania offers plenty of room for women to take charge. My guides have been heads of the community development programmes, a taxi driver and grocery store keeper and a manager of the legal department of a private bank – positions traditionally reserved for the men.
The first orphanage I visited is also run by a woman. A divorced African Muslim woman whose own kids have grown up, she has taken it onto herself to raise some 79 kids. Visiting an orphanage is essentially a sad experience but this place left me with more questions than answers. A lack of beds, bare concrete walls, a hole in the roof and probably most unimaginable to the Western mind – no water supply. Mama Arima invested into digging a well but in Tanzania the water is often salty and this cannot be predicted. This is the fate of MWANDALIWA orphanage. At night the kids are sent to a neighbours tap to get some water. Most nights they succeed, on others they are caught and turned away with dry buckets.
The kids are very well mannered, clean and accurately dressed. One of the boys sang the Adhan (Islamic call to prayer) as it was time for prayer with the most beautiful voice. There is a young man who speaks some English, he stays at the house to teach the kids and also so they have someone there with them at all times, like in a real family.
In Tanzania it gets dark early and very quickly. The sun was setting rapidly and I was three daladalas (local mini bus transport) and two hour drive away from Dar es Salaam. My guide and I said good bye to Mama Arima and the kids who were starting to mess around and dashed for the daladala. Sabina left me half way through the first ride as she lives outside Dar and I had to find my way to the hotel alone. It was a great experience, riding through the late evening with other people returning from work, finding the right bus in the middle of a huge, crowded market, arriving into the empty city centre of Dar es Salaam, and packing my bag, ready for a days travel to Iringa, a region in the south of Tanzania and Berega in central Tanzania to further investigate the conditions of orphaned children in Tanzania.
