Tanzania: Day 4 in Mvuti

Today we went to a different municipality from the previous sites. We went to Mvuti in the municipality of Ilala. The previous three sites were in Kinondoni. Although we left at 6 AM there were many Tanzanians with the same idea. The vans were packed with twice as many passengers as there were seats and the children were neatly dressed in their clean blue and white uniforms. Some people were wearing laced shoes with socks, slippers, or fancy shoes with one-inch heels -- some were bare footed. Groups of two or more were holding hands as they walked through the grassy fields to school.

We passed a few bicycles -- not as many as one would expect. A few riders had one or two passengers. There were more bicycles carrying coal than there were carrying people. We saw wheel barrows with -- on average -- six white plastic twenty-litre containers of water being pushed through neighbourhoods and along the roadway. One stopped at a school where the driver delivered a container to the staff office. Many schools collect the water from the roof in large plastic tanks. One school had a 3x3x1 metre open concrete tank in front of it. The tank was dry.

We arrived at Mvuti just before 7 AM. The children lined up with their coconut straw brooms in hand and started to sweep the leaves from the sandy ground. They tried to move together as if in a chorus line.

Many children travelled to school with containers filled with water for the trees and plants. This municipality did not seem as dry as the others we visited. Today for the first time during our distribution, it rained. We were delighted and thankful for the cooler moment. It lasted for two minutes. There were sixty children selected from Mvuti to receive bedkits, the others were travelling from other schools in the same district -- sixty from each of ten schools. The truck used for the bedkit delivery was sent to pick up other children who lived too far away from Mvuti to walk and had no other means of travelling to receive their bedkit.

Today was special and heartwarming. There were a few sick children: one very weak, another who left the hospital so she could receive her bedkit, one in a wheelchair, and three albino children with special needs. All the children were delightful. One said "I love you," in English.

All 600 children showed up and each received a bedkit donated by you kind people.

Thank you.

Grace Wood
SCAW 2006 Tanzania Travelling Team