Home Visits

How different would our schools be in the US if our teachers regularly visited their students’ homes? The concept is not so out of the ordinary here, because Tanzanians have a strong sense of communal living. “It takes a village to raise a child” is quite literal here, so it’s not strange for school representatives to want to know the family and for the family to want to know the school. All of our students are women between the ages of 23 and 53. Most of them are mothers; many of them are single parents. Moshi is a town of about 100,000 people so its culture is somewhere in between the traditions of village life and urban life. Many of our students have moved from the surrounding villages to Moshi for better economic opportunities. Few of them have seen this move actually pay off.

Each Friday morning, the current volunteers travel to the home of one of our students for tea and snacks. We always bring bread, sugar, tea and a little toy if she has children. Usually we meet the kids, but I have yet to meet a husband. (Sometimes they are working, sometimes they are just absent.) The three homes I have visited so far have all been very different:

Zaina set the bar high. She showed off her Henna artist skills and we were the models. Her business plan for GHTA is to expand her Henna clientele. Zaina is from the predominantly Muslim island of Zanzibar where Henna is very common. Moshi seems to have about a 50/50 split between Muslims and Christians, so Henna is popular here as well. Zaina is also an excellent cook and made us a feast for lunch. She caters some local events and sells embroidery to supplement her income. She is an entrepreneur in every sense of the word.

Zaina served chai, curry, chapati, and mandazi!

The artist in action

That was not a typical home visit. The following week we met Agnes. Agnes is in her forties and one of our more quiet students. Her home was spacious and lovely and had an endless stream of children coming through. Agnes has two kids of her own, but she has also taken in many children of relatives that have passed away. Her husband had a good job as an accountant in the 1990s, but passed away suddenly from a heart attack ten years ago. Since then, her lifestyle has drastically changed. Her family was as close to middle class as you can get in a developing economy like Tanzania, but now she is close to the standard Tanzanian life of a little more than a $1 a day. She now rents out rooms in her home for income and has recently started hair braiding. (A skill she learned in my vocations class!) She is optimistic that things will turn around with her GHTA education.

And finally-- Margaret. Margaret is 26 years old and lives in one small room with her six year old son Brian, two year old daughter Miriam, and her fifteen year old sister Paulina. I have seen many American closets bigger than this room they all share. There is nowhere for five people to sit in her home, so we went to a neighbor’s room that was slightly bigger and can fit a couch. Margaret told us that she had a restaurant job for four years, but had to quit with the birth of Miriam. She worked from 6am until 10pm, six days a week, cooking chapati (flatbread like tortillas) over a smoky and oily charcoal grill. She made about $43 per month. 

She had a second baby. Her second husband left her, and she was forced to leave that job to raise the children alone. Give a Heart to Africa is her new chance to find a job again. She would like to run her own food stand. She would like to have the money for school fees for her children and for her sister. At 26 years old, she has a lot of life ahead of her and hopefully lots of opportunities to make her life better.

The collection of rooms that make up Margaret's neighborhood. 

Margaret in her home with Monika, GHTA Director

The home visits make a huge impact on our relationships with our students. They get to know us better and we learn to understand why homework doesn't always get done and why some women seem so tired each morning. The one thing that is consistent with each student is their desire and eagerness to learn. When asked what she wanted to learn more of and what her favorite subject was, Agnes said that everything she learns at GHTA is useful. Just the simple act of learning, for her, makes a difference.  

From Left to Right: Monika, Molly, Yelena, me, Margaret, and Miriam