Back in around 2009 through my dance school – World Fusion Dance Company – we started sponsoring a student and teacher at the School of St Jude in Tanzania. We held a fundraiser concert to raise money for the sponsorship and I have continued it since travelling. I always dream like my World Vision sponsor that I could one day visit my sponsor child and see how the money was helping her education (if at all – which we all fear right?!).
So as soon as I arrived at the school to commence my volunteer placement, I enquired about a home visit. By the time I actually went out to meet her and her family, I had already been working at the school for 2 weeks and had actually even been taking photos in her class – so I saw and knew who she was, but she never knew that I was her sponsor.
The day finally came to get the school bus on a Saturday morning and we were to pick her and her mother up from a designated stop on the normal school bus route so they could direct us to their home. We drove down a dirt main road around 20 minutes from our school and there stood my very timid sponsor child with her mum who was dressed elegantly in a yellow and black African Kanga outfit including the African style turbans. They guided us just around the corner to their home which was typical for the poorer areas of Arusha with 1 bedroom mud with homes in adjoining clusters of 3-4.
Inside was one room with no adjoining kitchen or bathroom – one room which mum dad and 2 kids sleep, eat and live within. It was very tidy and appeared to have everything they really needed. Inside she has a kerosene burner which is the norm for cooking inside or a wood/charcol fuelled fire outside. I didn’t take notice if they had electricity there but I am guessing not as it’s not very common for most poorer areas of Arusha.
Through my interpreter from the school I was able to ask questions to the mother and vice versa. She actually could speak a little English so we were very happy to communicate and especially when we realized she was only a year younger than me with 2 kids! She asked about my family history and I asked about their’s. I learnt that she has been doing a tailor course so that she can start sewing as a means to bring money in because currently only the father works as a truck driver in Arusha.
Slowly my sponsor child came out of her shell. She pulled out all her report cards and some of her exercise books with homework for me to see and promised to keep studying hard. We have realized that these children look at their sponsors as people who at any moment could end their education. They know that they are sponsored which pays for their education so they think if we see they have bad marks (below 80%) that we may not continue to sponsor them!
They took me for a walk around their neighbourhood. As they don’t have any taps with running water in their house or within the group of houses, they go to a mosque next door that has a well which they purchase a small bucket of water for approx 80 shilling. One thing I found frustrating was the stream at the back of the neighbourhood which many people take the water to wash their clothes and some to boil and drink – it was full of rubbish – people just dumping it in as well as the endless breeding ground for malaria. I watch everyday as people throw rubbish onto the roads, into gardens, around their homes, into creeks and even whilst I was in a boat in Zanzibar a fisherman threw plastic bottles into the ocean. It really kills me to watch a nation choke themselves and their environment on rubbish and create preventable situations that arise to disease. Im hoping that slowly the next generation that we see coming out of the likes of St Jude’s are educated and responsible to understand the damage they are doing. I’ve often joked about doing a “Clean up Arusha Day” just like we have in Australia and we all agreed it’s never going to happen. There are no apparent rubbish collections in the neighbourhoods, so people do the best they can and burn the rubbish, leaving the charcol and bit left over for the local chickens and goats to sift through.
Sorry got off track – so it was a great insight into the way many of the locals in Arusha are living – I must say that even though my sponsor child and her family did not have a lot of belongings, their home was immaculate and everything decorated with doilies, plastic flowers or tributes to god. Her mother took great pride in what they have and this is often reflected when we step into many of the sponsor childrens homes and even the boarding rooms at the school, where the children have carefully decorated their beds and walls with cards and pictures.
I walked away that day not depressed but happy to know that the money I’m using to sponsor her is going where it is supposed to and it really is giving her and the rest of her family a chance for a healthier and more opportunistic future.
Next blog….. Zanzibar!
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