Likamba Village

Joshia wanted us to work at Likamba Village, mainly because he had an association with the church choir there, but anyway I was happy to be guided by his experience.

Like most villages, there is more than one route to get there, but we took the Nairobi road turning off before the market village of Ngaremtoni. The road/track slowly deteriorates and becomes dusty. This is a major cause of erosion and at times I have had to use four wheel drive in the wee Maruti because the dust was so thick - maybe 30 cm!
Then when there is heavy rain, the dust is washed away and the road becomes a river!
Vehicles tend to look for the best driving surface and the road becomes wider and wider - adding to the problem.

We decided to visit the primary school to find where the Village Executive Officer could be located. We later worked with this school in our (the Agency's) Primary Schools Assistance Programme. But I have to show the All Black we found there. There is a thriving industry of secondhand clothing in Tanzania and people do not know the circumstances of it really.

It may be thought that clothing given to charity somehow gets to third world people and is given to them. But how is it distributed? Well Take this girl's All Black football jersey; it was bought in New Zealand by an American tourist who sometime later puts it in a charity bin. It is bundles up and transported in bales to Tanzania where it is auctioned off (possibly to pay for the transport). The buyer then washed and irons it and displays it in his stall (this type of clothing is mtumba - second hand clothing) and sells it to this girl (or her mother). So while the charity clothing is actually sold on, it provides useful employment for someone and supplies clothing at a much less expensive price (affordable). I really good industry!

The school Head Teacher sent a girl with us as a guide to find the Village Executive Officer. She of course was excited to travel in our vehicle and showed us the best way to find him. Her bonus was that she was close to her home and had an early finish to her school day.
The Village Executive Office was a fine young fellow and we could see he was prepared to support us in our environmental project. No wonder! His father had been a forester and on his farm grew Eucalyptus on a coppice rotation to supply/sell poles for building and other uses. Simply put, a house is built by standing poles in the ground, tying them together and filling the gap with rocks or other material. Then the whole lot is plastered over with a soil/clay and cow dung mix. A very effective method.
So we made plans to set our programme.
Of course the programme would include women, so we went to talk to the chairperson of the local women's group - associated to the church and the choir. This group was quite active and had received assistance from New Zealand. The picture is of the Chairperson with her father and daughter. Being of the Arusha tribe - closely related to Maasai, she often provided loshoro or sour milk to sustain us. Loshoro is sour milk with cooked maize and is refreshing. Maziwa mgando - sour milk is also refreshing and kept in a calabash. The calabash is lined with the ash of Dodonea a shrub endemic to New Zealand, Australia and Africa (our Ake Ake). I recall sitting in her house and hearing her shake up the calabash to mix the separated sour milk and the water associated with it. They have these big, one litre enamel mugs that are filled with loshoro or milk and I had difficulty in consuming so much so quickly!

These are members of the Likamba women's group who managed the New Zealand donated maize mill - for making maize four to make the staple food of Ugali. They also had a kiln donated and made clay jikos - small fireboxes as cookers. Income generation for them. They were active and participatory. This was a very sustainable project.

We proceeded around the village and saw that wheat was grown there for the commercial production of beer - Safari Larger. The area received more rainfall than most of the other areas we worked.



We visited this 'old bugger'. He actually had planted and cared for a lot of trees and there was good diversity. He had two wives, this was his first wife and the other was much younger. She showed me her hedge of Sesbania seban and told me that she cut branches off it on a regular basis and fed them to her cow. The sticks that were left, she would dry in the sun and after about a week she would use them as fuel in her jiko. Just a few sticks would be enough to boil water to make a Thermos of tea.
But the old bugger tried to entice me away from Josiah by telling me he wanted to show me special trees. Once we were out of hearing, he would hit me up for money to buy sugar - pombe more like - booze.
He never got money from me.
There was much for us to do at Likamba and once the Primary School Project was under way, we would return more often.