Mama Anna

Jambo! I'm in Tanzania and finally able to access a computer! The power here only works about half the time and the internet is even less. I'm starting to pick up some Swahili and my English has gone completely downhill haha I'm starting to sound like the vendors. We're living in a house in a jungle village outside of Arusha. We're at the base of Mt. Meru and about an hour away from Mount Kilimanjaro. I've only seen the base because it's rainy season so it's always covered in clouds. I've heard it's incredible though! In about a month we should be able to have a clearer view. I've never been anywhere more beautiful in my life - or more muddy haha this place is great though. I don't have enough time to go into details but I'll type it up at home tomorrow and put it on here as soon as I have internet access again. This is the story of one of the women we have met with. These people are AMAZING!

Momma Anna (May 10)
Today we visited the home of Momma Anna. She is partners with Ernest and has turned her home into an orphanage for neighbor kids whose parents have died from AIDS or are too poor to raise their family (like the Casa Hogars in Mexico). The kids all receive an education (mostly English classes) at her home give by volunteers until they enter public primary school. Some of the kids she originally worked with are even in secondary school and her own children are in college – which is pretty amazing for this country.

This is her story:
In 2003 she was pregnant with her last baby. She went into the clinic for a checkup and they did a routine HIV test. She found out she was positive for the disease. She came home and told her husband, who said that it was impossible. He refused to go to the hospital to get checked. She had her baby. She listened to BBC radio a lot and had heard of a way to make a sort of formula from soybeans instead of breastfeeding the baby. She did this for 9 months to avoid transmitting the disease and spent hours soaking the soybeans all night, ground them by hand into a pulp, making a milk from it, letting it sit for a few more hours, then give it to the baby.
Her birthday that year (April 6, 2004) was a “happy morning of celebration and sad night because my husband dies”. He got really sick with malaria, but was too “shy” (scared and ashamed) to visit the doctor. As he got more and more sick, he finally let her take him to a village clinic. The doctors there couldn’t do much for him and he was suffocating. Finally, he let her take him to the real hospital to run tests. They put him on oxygen and he died a few hours later.

Two days later, she buried her husband. They were living in a rented house in a nearby village and had been working on building their own that was large enough for all their children. As she returned home with her children, her in-laws arrived and started counting everything she owned. She asked why they were doing this and they said they wanted to record how much was in her house so that she didn’t try to steal and sell any of her son’s inheritance. The preacher came over and she started to cry. He asked them if real Christians would treat someone who just lost her husband like that. They left and never came back. She hasn’t talked to them since.

From then on, it was just Anna and her children. The town knew she was HIV+ and had labeled her as a dead woman. No one was willing to help and she desperately needed money to finish and move into her half-finished home. She told her own siblings that she wanted to go to work. Her husband had always worked and she took care of the family at home. They convinced her that she couldn’t leave her children at home to find a job – someone they knew had done that and when she returned home, the neighbors had put her 3-month old in a hot oven to punish her for being a bad mom.

Anna went to a business man who was the boss of one of her relatives and asked if there was any way he could get any sort of donations to help her finish her home. He came over to see the property. All that was finished were the walls, so he made a list of everything that was needed to complete the project, called around for 2 weeks, and got enough donations to cover the million shillings needed to do the work that was left.

Anna moved into the new home and put cardboard over the windows (which were just open squares – no glass), and slept with her children on the dirt floor. Over time, she decided that she wanted to help educate those who couldn’t afford it. She now has 12 preschool children in her care, plus a few more older children. She was so proud of her work – and rightfully so. She is teaching these kids to accept all types of people – HIV or not, and to value the importance of getting all the education they can. Volunteers cycle through with the Tanzania Volunteer Placement Program. They come in every morning to teach the preschoolers.

Her kitchen is just a bunch of pots on the floor – they have to be washed outside and they cook outside using a propane tank and burner, or coal – depending on the weather. The bathroom plumbing is bad so it’s being used as storage room and there are latrines in the backyard instead. The kids share mattresses on bunk beds in two small rooms and Momma Anna has her own bed. I’m pretty sure it’s the only she owns that’s her own. The front room is used as a small schoolroom. Her yard is muddy and crisscrossed with clotheslines.

They are supported by small income projects (raising and selling pigs, goats and hens, eggs and milk), foreign donations, and scholarships for the children to attend higher school.

Not only has she given everything to run this orphanage/school (called Bose House), but Anna also works with an HIV+ microfinancing group. The small loans provide help for small business owners that won’t be able to get a job because of their health status. They also have a chance to invest in health and education insurance. After 3 months of investing 1000-5000 shillings each week, the members of this program are allowed to take out a loan of up to 3 times the amount of money they have invested. Everyone involved takes a turn helping to meet the physical needs of those who are too sick to make it to the meetings. These people are now able to support their families because of Anna and Ernest’s work.

I've been able to meet so many amazing people...I can't wait to get started on our projects! A lot will be happening in the next week so I'll write up more stories and get some pictures on here soon.