While Aikande stayed with her extended family, I enjoyed staying with Ben and Katy Ray and their three lovely children in Usa River. We have known them since our Iringa days and they are also mission partners with Holy Trinity Combe Down church in Bath. They moved from Iringa to Usa River about a year ago and it was wonderful to be welcomed into their family and join in with spelling bees, lots of games and even attend Julia's school Nativity! And so good to see the work they are starting with SAFI (See Ability First International). Here we are singing and signing at their morning devotions...
It has been a big move for Ben and Katy, stepping out in faith into the unknown, and it is wonderful to see SAFI taking shape with their resilience and amazing creativity! They are working with groups of people with disabilities across the country; they are offering design support and skills and business training in order to see income-generating enterprises flourish, and not just see livelihoods improved but also mindsets changed. They are building up their workshop and capacity to welcome small groups locally for training and also offering support to groups much further afield. Mama Hive is delighted to be one such group looking forward to collaborating with SAFI in 2025! It was lovely to spend time with the three women who had lost their hearing and been coming to SAFI for the last couple of months to learn how to make these gorgeous dolls!
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| Aikande enjoyed meeting Gemma and getting some good advice on accounts and TRA issues for charitable social enterprises! |
I travelled back from the SAFI office one day with Aikande to visit her family home in the banana farms in the foothills of Mt Meru. (I had no idea you could grow so many varieties of banana in one place! Different bananas of all sizes for every kind of eating: raw, cooked, fried, roasted...). It was lovely to meet Aikande's sister who I have been in contact with for a few years now; she is involved in all kinds of wonderful ministries serving disadvantaged women in Tanzania. I also met their lovely mum and young brother!
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| With Aikande's family |
Our other big reason for travelling was to attend the three-day Christmas Fair on the other side of Arusha. This is a large annual event ... and very costly with the registration, all the transportation and accommodation, and we were very grateful to have the opportunity to launch Mama Hive products there for the first time. Aikande and I bunked together in a very basic little guesti and lived on chapati and chips! The Fair was unlike anything we ever see in Mwanza! So many people and so many vendors from as far away as Zimbabwe, and so many quality products. We did really well, even despite the crazy, heavy rains! We sold almost everything we brought with us and enjoyed all the networking (and surprise meetings with familiar faces!) and certainly learned a lot for next time! We were both exhausted by the end of it and I was rather hoarse!
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| At the Arusha Christmas Fair |
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Red route: Mwanza to Kilimanjaro (13 hours; about 800km) |
Catch up on the previous blog posts: