Iringa Hope visits 2013: Wasa

Today we had a busy day. We went to visit two new sites for SACCOS. They are both on the same road so it made sense to do this, however it resulted in another busy day. To get to these villages we went down the hill from Iringa and turned west towards Ihemi and Ifunda. The drive down the pavement takes about 50 minutes after which we turned and headed down a long dirt road. The drive is pretty; we went through a beautiful valley with a few rough spots here and there, but nothing we hadn’t seen before.

The one problem was that no one in our vehicle knew where we are going. We were going to have a reporter from Radio Furaha accompany us today, but his wife had to go to the hospital and as a result we made several stops to ask for directions. The direction we were always given was “moja kwa moja” , which means “straight ahead”. When we finally reached Wasa, our destination, we found the Lutheran Church, but there was no one around. We needed to find the pastor’s house.

We stopped at a secondary school and learned that the pastor lives on the other side of the village we just came from. So, we turned around and headed back to where we had just come from. It’s somewhat difficult to tell where the village is, but the Tanzanian members of our team knew where to stop. The young man we talked with said he was planning on going to our meeting anyway, so he climbed into the backseat (which already held four people- so our intern obligingly climbed into the back) and directed us to our destination.

We got to the pastor’s house – or rather we stopped on the road where we could see the pastor’s house. The pastor came running to meet us. We all walked down along the corn to his house for chai and potatoes – and, of course, our meeting. The corn was interesting. On one side of the dirt path it was 8 feet tall – the biggest we have seen. On the other side it was 4 feet tall – not bad, but not great. The pastor explained that the tall corn was planted by a man who “could get some capital” and used fertilizer and better seed. The short corn was planted by a man who could not afford fertilizer or seed.

The pastor is currently living in a mud house and compound. Inside he and his wife have tacked up newspapers and hung them from cord to try to cover up the mud. He explained to us that he is going to build a new house near the church soon. We had chai with Irish potatoes – they are excellent! We talked a little about this area. He told us that he has 200 adults and 300 children in his congregation. Most of the children cannot attend school beyond primary since their parents cannot afford secondary school tuition. The estimated annual income is $435/year for most of the congregation. He tells us that for those who have some capital it is about $1,800/year – but these are very few. But there is no source of capital in this village he tells us. That is why they asked us to come.

The pastor sent word out to some of his congregation members who are interested in forming a SACCOS and soon se were joined by several of them. We spent 1 ½ hours going over the details of what they need to do, how much capital is required to get started, etc., and then we invited them to send 3 people to our training session that will be held in Iringa in late March.

We asked about their interest in SACCOS and were told that they always listen to our Radio program on Radio Furaha. According to the pastor the show is often the subject of talk in town the day after, which is something we like to hear.

We said good bye and headed down the road to Kiponzero for our next meeting.