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| From Tanzania 2011 |
Two team members hold up the mosquito net and the team explains that this is a treated net to give even more protection from those ornery little beasts. At this point I did my best (read awful) demonstration of a mosquito that was trying to bite Mike - and then pretended to fly away frustrated. Our Tanzanian team mate/driver/friend and translator Emmanuel (who was profiled in an earlier blog) explains the items to the crowd in Swahili, while Nancy dances around with the school bag and the other team members hold up the items, all the while enjoying the cheers and enthusiastic reception from the crowd.
Our team is excellent -- a cohesive unit -- which is making my job easy. We are enjoying each other's company and laughing frequently enough that we sometimes forget we are working.
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| From Tanzania 2011 |
Today, thanks to our team, this gave me the opportunity to interview some parents and children. Sleeping Children interviews bedkit recipients and their parents to try and gain some understanding of how the families live, how the bedkit will help them, and how it might be improved. Team members on SCAW distributions often comment that the interviews impact them deeply, to hear some of the realities of how people of very limited means try to survive and live.
Our demonstration of the bedkit at the beginning of the day broke the ice with the thirty or so parents, so I decided to experiment, and do an interview with the whole group. We asked questions about the bedkit and got some interesting comments. The parents felt the mosquito net would be crucial in giving the family more protection from malaria-carrying mosquitos. Most households had only one untreated net to protect one or two family members, so a second was very welcome. We explained their children would receive a treated net that even repelled those deadly mosquitoes.
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| From Tanzania 2011 |
Then we showed the parents the piece of material that each child would receive. Some mothers said they could get access to a sewing machine which they would use to make shorts or a skirt for their child. Other mothers said they would be able to hand-sew these items. All were enthusiastic about the material which Mama Wandoa decided to include for the first time this year in the bedkit.
We then asked the parents for suggestions on what other items might be considered for inclusion in the bedkit in future years. One mother said, "Underwear" and many other mothers loudly voiced their agreement with this suggestion. Our team will pass this suggestion on to Mama. Other suggestions were to include soap, shoes, and a toothbrush and toothpaste -- oh that we could give them all these things and much more.
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| From Tanzania 2011 |
We ended the interview by thanking the parents for their comments, and said we now had to get to work to take the pictures of their children which would go back to the donors who provided the funds for the bedkits. They nodded their understanding and agreement, and off we went to do our jobs and to experience the joy of seeing another 700 beautiful Tanzanian children smiling as they received their bedkits.
Ted Swanston
for SCAW Team Tanzania 2011
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