Mtandika Mission, Tanzania
Mtandika is a large village in the dry Ruaha river valley, 400km west of Dar es Salaam, the business capital of Tanzania and 100km east of the District Capital of Iringa. It is a very poor village, depending on the sale of onions to traffic passing through on the main highway from Dar es Salaam to Zambia, 500km to the west.
The local Roman Catholic Teresina Sisters (Teresa of the Little Child Jesus), who were founded by the Italian Consalatas, are trained in Iringa as teachers, doctors, nurses etc to help the poor in the area. One of their missions is at Mtandika, where the Sisters run the Primary and Trade Schools, a Hospital, a Clinic and an Orphanage. Diocesan funds in Iringa are very small and little is available to help with the Sisters’ work in the village. They thus depend to a great extent on donations from overseas. There is also a government run Secondary School [Lukosi] in the village.
One of the prime movers in the Mission is Sister Barberina Mhagala, who Mary and I started supporting in the early 1990s. At that time she was Headmistress of a very successful Primary School in Iringa. However, because she was so successful, she was moved by the Bishop in the mid-1990s to develop the Primary School in Mtandika. This she also did very successfully until she had to retire a few years ago at the Government’s statutory age for teachers of 55. The Primary School now has 550 students and a very good academic record. By UK standards the facilities are still very basic. The classrooms are dark and dusty with the minimum of teaching aids.Exercise books are of poor quality and not all students have money for books and pens. The six or so teachers live in mud huts in the Mission grounds. Having said that, the facilities have greatly improved since Sister Barberina moved to Mtandika some 10 years ago and the exam results are now some of the best in the country.
Since she retired from being Headmistress of the Primary School, Sister Barberina has been developing a Trade School with the help of many individual sponsors, particularly Parishioners of Our Lady of Sorrows and St John the Evangelist, Tadworth. The Trade School provides skills training for girls who are either orphans or have no fees for secondary education. Sister started by building a classroom, where the girls are given sewing lessons and are learning to make garments to sell, together with an accommodation block. Because many of the children do not have homes locally, accommodation is critical. With the funds that we have sent her in the last couple of years, Sister Barberina has completed roofing the main blocks, installed windows and doors and carried out finishing works. She has also built a 20,000 litre water tank and provided solar lighting in the existing blocks. The children are taught to be as self sufficient as possible and grow their own food and rear animals in the Mission grounds. Having said that, certain produce still needs to be purchased in Iringa and Sister purchased a second hand pick-up last year to enable her to transport items more efficiently than by using the local buses. With £2000 raised at a charity wine tasting we held in the summer, much from very generous donations from Parishioners who weren’t even able to attend, together with a very generous donation of £500 from Fr John on behalf of the Hall Committee, Sister has now started building toilet and kitchen/dining facilities. At present the children cook and eat in the open.
Her next plans are to build more accommodation and a workshop where boys will learn carpentry. Over the last two years we have also managed to attract funding from Tadworth Overseas Aid Trust [TWOAT], who pay for part of the salaries for the three sewing teachers at the Trade School.
Sister Barberina Mhagala
As well as supporting Sister Barberina in her capital expenditure, some 40 of the children at the Trade School or at Lukosi Secondary School who cannot afford the fees, for whatever reason, are being sponsored in amounts varying from £120 to £250 a year respectively. Education is essential if Tanzania is to fully develop its full potential and anything is possible given the opportunity. As an example we always quote the case of Flaviana Charles, one of the orphans from Mtandika who Sister Barberina introduced us to over 10 years ago. Flaviana went on to get a Degree in Law from Dar es Salaaam University and has just received a Masters in International Law and Human Rights at Coventry University. She has now returned to Tanzania and set up her own law practice helping the less well off.
As well as currently supporting Sister Barberina, we are conscious that the Mission Hospital and Clinic need support. A report from another friend who supports the Mission and who visited them a year or so ago, reported in her diary :
“We were given a tour of the hospital and this was heart breaking. This was the big shock of the trip. Dr Sister Mary had a locked dispensary with very few drugs. She has prepared a tiled clean room for simple surgery but had no equipment. The baby delivery room was bleak as were the wards with their simple iron bedsteads close together with very poor mattresses and single sheets. There were squat toilets for male and female. The children’s wards were basic and bleak. The patients were sitting around out side and relatives must bring food and cook it. The hospital has no food. It has large areas of land under cultivation and many animals reared but most of this is sold to support the hospital.
Clinic day and hundreds of children are being weighed and treated. None of them will make the desired weight.”
Sister Teresa and Sister Happiness took me on a tour of the campus. Guinea fowl, lots of lovely rabbits, many pigs in wooden pens on stilts, hens, ducks and turkeys. Great areas of fruit trees and vegetables. All the water must be carried from the river. Labour is cheap. The patients relatives must live in huts around the hospital, so they labour in exchange for food.
We saw the bleak nurses’ home. A bare room, mud floor, small bed, cooking outside and no sign of washing or toilet facilities. Dr Mary has raised money to dig the foundations of a new nurses’ home but has no money to continue the building. She wants better housing in order to attract good nurses to the hospital.”
The most important recent development for us is that, in the last couple of months, we have got the agreement from a charity based in Ashtead, Action in Africa, that we can put our sponsorship through their “books” and if the donations are Gift Aided, they will claim back the tax on our behalf. As we sent £11,565 to Sister Barberina in 2007 and expect to send in excess of £10,000 this year, you will realise that, whilst not all payments can be Gift Aided, we could get back some £2,000+ from the tax man. This would be a wonderful bonus for the Sisters. Action in Africa is doing very similar work in Nyaishozi in the North West of Tanzania, close to the Ruanda border.
As many of you know, Mary and I are visiting Tanzania whilst this edition of the Lychgate is being finalised. During our visit we will be staying several days with Sister Barberina and the other Sisters and will report back in the next edition of the Lychgate in the Spring. However, in conclusion, there is still a lot of money needed to :
- complete toilet and cooking / dining facilities and develop a further accommodation block and workshop at Sister Barberina’s Trade School
- improve the Hospital and provide equipment and drugs
- complete the water supply and provide basic sanitary facilities
- educate the great number of orphans or children whose families are too poor to support them.
Mary and I would obviously be pleased to let you know how you can help, particularly by Gift Aiding regular donations for the education of students or capital works through Action in Africa.
Michael Agius