The Mufindi Children's Project - TANZANIA

 

Mufindi Mountaineer's Challenge 2014

It's time to revisit some young friends in the Mufindi Highlands of South Central Tanzania.

In 2009, a group of 6 climbers from the Pacific Northwest helped raise $26,000 for the Mufindi Children's Project in the south central highlands of Tanzania by linking their climb of Mt.Kilimanjaro to a fundraising effort that targeted friends, relatives, and other colleagues in support of the project's mission and goals.

Villages in the remote Mufindi District had been devastated by HIV-AIDS, a disease that most villagers were loathe to recognize or even speak about.  Rather than seek help, many of them simply died in their village huts, or went off to the bush to die, leaving orphans and other vulnerable children, and also the most elderly, to fend for themselves.  This desperate situation was not sustainable.

Where are the Mufindi Highlands?

The Mufindi Highlands are relatively remote, an entire day's bus ride from Dar es Salaam, and about 2 hours by car or truck from the provincial capitol of Iringa.  Power, road access, and communications are limited.  Most of the people make a living off of subsistence agriculture, often supplemented by wages earned while working on nearby tea plantations, coffee estates, forestry operations, or farms. 

Before local and international responses to the problems in Mufindi District were recognized and addressed, scenes like those in the following pictures were becoming common in the back country villages.



Homeless children living in makeshift quarters

   

Young children being looked after by elderly grandmother - "bibi"
 



Needing shelter, food, a place to go to school, and medical help





Orphans with elderly caretaker

Since these photos were taken, a great deal of progress has been made in the Mufindi District to help turn the situation around.  A local non-profit, registered in Tanzania in 2005, and called Foxes Community and Wildlife Conservation Trust (FCWCT) leads the way.  It is strongly supported by non-profit sister organizations in the UK, Canada, and the USA.  Each are registered tax-exempt organizations in their respective countries.  These organizations have raised and provided funds to the Mufindi Children's Project, have collected and delivered goods in kind (clothing, books, hospital equipment, medical supplies, infant formula, etc.), and have given generously of their time and expertise with periodic visits, often in the company of other volunteers, sometimes visiting doctors or dentists or people who have special expertise in things like sanitation, solar power, or creating safe water supplies.  The Mufindi Children's Project has also been blessed by funds from various Rotary Clubs, some foreign aid contributions, and access to HIV-AIDs test kits, anti-retroviral drugs, CD-4 reagents, and HIV-AIDS prevention education materials.

 

The first effort by the Mufindi Mountaineers in 2009 was focused on the completion and stocking of the Mdabulo Care and Treatment Center.  This is a place where villagers, in privacy, could go to be tested for HIV-AIDs, where they could be educated about the disease, its prevention and management, and where they could be treated if found to be HIV+.  Clinics at the CTC are now widely attended and the stigma associated with the disease has been greatly diminished as knowledge about the disease and its treatment become more widespread. Many formerly ill persons have gathered enough strength to return to work in their fields or to be reunited with other members of their immediate families.

 

We will leave to the next blog a description of what the Mufindi Mountaineer's fundraising effort in 2014 is intended to fund.  The Mufindi Mountaineer's Challenge in 2014 involves 13 climbers-trekkers and we hope to more than double the amount raised in 2009.

 

We will also explore in greater detail the Mission and Goals of the Mufindi Children's Project. 

 

Until the next blog post. Peace and harmony.