I’m in San Francisco at the moment. This week I hopped from Tanzania to Amsterdam to Orlando to Phoenix to San Francisco. I hop back to Orlando on Saturday for the holidays.
The highways, smooth roads (I never thought I’d call 101 a smooth road), and bright lights were a bit overwhelming last night when I arrived here. Now I’m wide awake when I should be asleep, and thought it’d be a good time to recap a few things about the trip.

When we first arrived in Moshi, we asked Mama Lucy to list her top three priorities. They were: 1) making sure the kids could attend school, 2) getting land, and 3) restarting her livestock project.

Priority #1: Schooling

There were 4 older kids who were awaiting funding to attend school, plus there are about 20 kids who have been denied attendance in the government’s primary schools for one reason or another (see the entry about the Tanzanian Run Around). Additionally, there were 6 kids who had funding to attend pre-school, but did not have transportation to get back and forth from school so they weren’t attending.

We have the funding to send the 4 older kids to school. We secured a commitment (keep fingers crossed) from the district education officer that the 20-ish kids who need to attend primary school would not be denied admission again, and that they will be able to begin in January. Alison is following up while she is there. We bought a vehicle for Mama Lucy so that the 6 kids who need to attend pre-school have reliable transportation to and from school.

And the vehicle should help out in a whole host of ways. We cannot imagine how Mama Lucy managed to raise dozens of children without a car! When a child got sick and needed to get to the hospital, she called a taxi if there was enough money, and if not, she took the bus or walked. They managed to regularly buy food for all of those people without a vehicle! Big bags of corn, bundles of firewood. Once again, we simply don’t know how she managed all these years.

The latest word from Alison is that registering the vehicle we bought is a slow and painful process. She was told to return to the government office in a week to follow up.

Priority #2: Land

Mama Lucy applied to the government 5 years ago for a piece of land for her and the kids. She applied for 25 acres. They are offering her 8 acres for sale. If it was free, then of course she’d be happy for whatever she could get, even though she needs more than that. We asked the government to buy more land from them, but the government isn’t budging. That’s right, the government has additional land available for sale that they won’t sell to Mama Lucy. The land itself isn’t particularly fertile, not irrigated, just lots of pasture. And of course there are some hostile neighbors (see the Beware of Men with Spears on Bikes entry).

We found some folks who are selling larger plots of land privately. We feel really comfortable with this route, and especially with the family we met on Sunday. Mama Lucy later told us that the family told her that they’ve decided to sell the land to her - they will not entertain any other offers or interested parties. They also told her they were surprised at how smoothly all of their dealings with her and us have gone. They’ve had lots of trouble when entering into discussions with other interested parties. Finally, they told Mama Lucy that they want to partner with her. They believe in her vision.

What a contrast!

The price of this land is substantially more than the original $6,000 price tag the government gave us, so we’ll need to coordinate some fundraising on Mama Lucy’s behalf. But this land is very good land, fertile, irrigated, with trees and fruits and vegetables growing on it - a place where the kids can be healthy and happy. So we think we’ve found a solution to the land situation.

Priority #3: Livestock

Mama Lucy primarily uses the house in Machame for raising livestock. She already has the facilities to raise 120 chickens there, plus several cows and a few dozen pigs. She had some livestock that got sick and died. She also had to sell some of the livestock to pay for some kids’ school fees earlier this year, so only a few pigs and cows remain - no chickens.

We didn’t make any progress on the livestock situation, but some great volunteers from I 2 I ran some numbers and concluded that Mama Lucy should start with replenishing the chicken coop. Hopefully the funds come in for that soon.

And in Other News
We (Mama Lucy and us) decided to start paying some of the folks who work with Mama Lucy. She has about 6 people working for her, some have worked with her for a year without any pay. Mama Lucy receives no pay.

We decided to add fruit to the kids’ diet since we hadn’t seen them eat fruit in the month we spent with them. Fruit is very expensive when feeding so many mouths. We also decided to begin a dedicated monthly budget for food, to ensure (as Amanda said) that the kids don’t go hungry ever again.
These items will need consistent support each month - about $650 total for food, fruit and worker compensation.

That’s it for now. Next up (hopefully), a second recap, tentatively titled “A Recap: What We Learned”

manka This entry was posted on Thursday, December 21st, 2006 at 1:57 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.