Firstly, I would like to wish my mother a happy birthday. I wish I could be there to celebrate your 49th birthday with you mam!! Hartelijk gefeliciteerd. Dikke kus en heel veel liefs. Or as they say in Kiswahili- Happy Birthday!! As many of you may know already, my mother was born in Dar and I'm sure that is part of the reason I ended up here. So I should probably thank her for that because so far this has been a fantastic experience (fingers crossed that it continues that way :)
Tonight I am going to see my other accomodation options and hopefully they will be a little bit better than the one I saw yesterday. Ocean view definitely does not have the same meaning here as it may in other countries. It was in the Upanga area which is closer to the center of Dar than where I am staying with Olaf. It's the same bus though, just a couple of extra stops so I will still be going against the traffic to get to work (which is good since going back to the house I got stuck in it yesterday and it took me 45 minutes to go a distance that would normally take 10 minutes, add on to that a bus crammed full of sweaty people and you have a quite unethereal experience!)
This weekend I am still planning on taking the bicycle to Slipway and then off to Bongoyo Island so I should have lots of pictures to post on Monday. Since I am not here to just sightsee, it is important to me that I use this outlet as another mechanism to raise awareness. As you all know by now, I am here to try and assist Children's Dignity Forum in their work related to eradicating child marriage and female genital mutilation (FGM) in Tanzania. In the process of doing this I have just been handed a fact sheet about children in Tanzania and thought it was important to mention these facts. These are in addition to the facts I have already listed on this site.
* There are 8 million children living in poverty (NBS and UNICEF)
*1 in 4 girls under 18 has already begun child-bearing (Tanzania Dempgraphic and Health Survey 2004)
*50% of babies are born without skilled attendants (Household Budget Survey 2007; Ministry of Health and Social Welfare)
*445 children under the age of 5 die each DAY of these, 140 are younger than one month old (Calculation is based on Census projections 2010, National Bureau of Statistics and Under-Five Mortality Rate of 29 per 1000 live births reported in Tanzania HIV/AIDS and Malaria Indicator Survey 2007/8)
*25 women die each day during pregnancy or childbirth (Tanzania Demographic and Health Survey 2004)
*Over 2.5 million children are chronically malnourished (Tanzania Demographic and Health Survey 2004)
*In 2010 alone there are expected to be 43,000 child deaths due to malnutrition (TWAWEZA)
*3 out of 5 schools do not have on-site water supply
*9 out of 10 children in rural areas are not enrolled in secondary school
*Over 90% of children under five years of age do not have a birth certificate.
It's hard to face the facts. And quite sad. I'm so impressed with what you're working on there. Looking forward to hearing about it :) Good luck finding accommodation.
ReplyDeleteQuirine,
ReplyDeletejij ook van harte met je moeder!!!!!!!!!
heb haar gisteren al een paar keer aan de tel gehad en vanmorgen jouw vader ook nog eventjes.
ik volg je elke dag! als ik 's morgens uit bed kom kijk ik even naar je site (ben soms al eerder op de hoogte dan je moeder :-))
echt topperdetop wat je doet!!!!!
liefs,
tante margo