At Lulanzi

Today we went to Lulanzi in the morning, then worked in the office in the afternoon.  Lulanzi is about a 75 minute drive into  the mountains of the Kilolo District.  Lulanzi is also the home village of our longtime friend Alex Mhanga.  Last year when we visited Lulanzi we met a delightful old man who told us about teaching in Tanzania in the “old days.”  He was a school teacher in the 40’s when Tanzania was a British colony.  He was there to greet us today along with the officers and the pastor.

Lulanzi started to organize their SACCOS last year after we visited.  They have been slowly working towards getting their capital together and the members enrolled.  So far they have enrolled 34 members and have another 9 working on paying their fees.  They have collected 950,000 TZS – which falls short of the 5,000,000 TZS they will need.  They asked us if we could help them with this, but we explained that we are no longer doing this and they needed to ask their US partner for help if they needed assistance.

The people here are anxious to start getting loans.  They have learned from talking to other SACCOS members that this will help them to increase their incomes.  One of the members came over to Tom and told him he listened to our radio program all of the time and wondered when he would start broadcasting.  There is a group here that gets together on Saturday to listen to the rebroadcast of our program.

Peter gave a class on the rights and obligations of being a member of a SACCOS.  Itiweni explained how Iringa Hope works.  You could see the heads nodding and the smiles as things were explained.  

Peter told us that some of the people have been in a SACCOS before.  Like so many that one was sponsored by a rich family.  The people bought shares, saved their money and applied for loans.  The family then gave a big loan to a relative, closed the SACCOS and left town. 

Having had this type of experience the members are very excited about having an Iringa Hope SACCOS.  In Iringa Hope all of the members own all of the assets.  There is no one controlling member or group. 

After the meeting we went into the pastor’s house for lunch.  We were surprised to be greeted by the daughter of a past Ihemi Evangelist. (Our own partner parish here is Ihemi.)  She is a theology student at the University of Iringa.  She is doing her internship at Lulanzi and came to meet us when she heard we would be there.

While we were waiting to eat Sandy took a look at the ladies preparing “chips”.  They were cooking over a fire in their “kitchen”.  The room was smoky but the women were busy working and ignoring it.  This is a pretty common thing here and accounts for many of the deaths of the women from lung diseases.

As we were leaving, our Ihemi friend asked for a ride back into town.  Along with her came a big basket full of things and a few sacks to take into town market to sell.  If we hadn’t been visiting at Lulanzi her alternative transportation would have been a bus to Kilolo followed by a short walk to catch another bus to a bus station near Iringa and then walk the rest of the way, which would have been a 4-5 hour trip. 

Tom spent the remainder of the day at the University with the MFI team.  When he left the others were still hard at work and they will be with us again all day tomorrow (Saturday).  We aren’t sure of the hours that our staff keeps the rest of the year, but when we are here they put in a lot of very long days.

When we got to Lulanzi we were surprised to see our "Bush teacher" from our last visit.  When we were here last this 90+ year old man told us about being a "Bush teacher" back in the 40's.

Lulanzi lies in the foothills of the mountains a 75 minute drive from Iringa.

The past Evangelist's daughter was here to greet us.  She is currently a theology student at the university.

This is our "Bush teacher" friend.  He had lots of good questions about how an Iringa Hope SACCOS would work.

Sandy took a look at the ladies preparing “chips”.  They were cooking over a fire in their “kitchen”.  The room was smoky but the women were busy working and ignoring it.