EI Goes to Tanga

It's now official! Emmanuel International is beginning a new partnership to work in the Tanga region of Tanzania. This is such exciting news and is something that has long been in our prayers and well over a year in the planning!

In May last year, Tim went with Ibrahimu (EI Iringa Team Leader) and Duncan Ndimbo (EI board member) to Tanga. For some months prior, we had been thinking and praying about the future and growth of  Emmanuel International's work in Tanzania. There had been a sense that we were to be more "EI Tanzania" than simply EI Iringa and EI Mwanza and there was also a sense that EI was ready to give birth to something new! And so we had been seeking what this meant. In that time four churches in four very different parts of the country contacted us about partnering together. Emmanuel International agreed to send teams to visit all four of them in May and June last year and thus it was that Tim went to Tanga to visit Bishop Stephen and his team in West Tanga. 

Tim, Ibrahimu and Duncan with Bishop Stephen and Tanga pastors

The church warmly welcomed the EI team and shared their heart and vision for touching their community and took them to see the projects they had begun. Kilindi and Handeni, the rural districts that make up West Tanga, are among the poorest in Tanzania with extremely low literacy rates. The vast majority of people are from the Zigua, Maasai and Nguu tribes and are subsistence farmers or pastoralists. As EI, we seek to partner with churches to empower them to meet community and physical needs while satisfying spiritual needs. Some of the village churches here have been struggling to survive often with fewer than 15 members and not knowing how reach out to their community physically and spiritually. Life for many village pastors is very hard, and Tim and the team visited two, who with little training and education don't well know how to engage their communities. The West Tanga church asked us specifically for training in this area, already recognizing they needed a holistic vision for mission to reach out with the love of Jesus to care for people's total needs. And after all four locations across the country had been visited, and after much prayerful consideration of all reports, it was decided that EI would begin to work in Tanga!

A traditional West Tanga village house 

Tim has been working hard over recent months working with the board, drafting a partnership agreement, and thinking through the key steps towards forming a partnership. Last week, just a few days after we left Tanzania, the partnership agreement was signed as the TAG Tanga Bishop, his secretary and some of the EI Tanzania board members met with Joel and the team members in Mwanza! We are also working with the TAG national missions department to find a team leader to head up the EI Tanga Office. The plan is to select someone or a family who has gone through the mission training school. Then they will go to Mwanza for training with EI and then be sent to Tanga!

Signing the partnership agreement

Taking the Tanga team to visit the Girls Health Project in Igombe

Top-Bar-tendi in Action at the Hive

The best person to introduce you to all the honey and beekeeping action at The Hive is Bhatendi! Julian, (our Bees Abroad beekeeping trainer) nicknamed her "Top-Bar-Tendi" or Top-Bar for short! I am so going to miss Bhatendi and working with her! She is gutsy with a great sense of humour, has a beautiful heart for people and a prayerful sensitivity. We have had some crazy times together beekeeping; hard, frustrating, funny and fun times! She was over at our house recently making sure she learned how to bake bread and cakes (both in my oven and also in the wonderpot) before I left! Bhatendi is now managing the EI Beekeeping project, working with the current three groups of beekeepers in Malya, Ngudu and Kayenze and now starting training with a fourth on Kome Island. 

Wonderpot lemon cake and oven-baked banana muffins

It has been fun working with Bhatendi to set up and kit out the honey processing room! It's something we have dreamed of and wanted for quite some time and thanks to Andy Mayers, overseer of Sherborne St John Meeting Room Trust, generous funding has made it possible! Until now, processing the honey from the beekeeping groups has been done in my kitchen or in our container... and time seemed to be running out to get something in place before we moved out and before the honey harvest started! Words are somehow not enough to express how relieved we were to get The Hive up and running when we did ... even if it did get a little down to the wire! 

So in the middle of June, just a few days after the tables were installed in the processing room, two weeks before the Hive opening and three weeks before our flights to leave Tanzania, the honey started coming in! Malya beekeepers got on with the harvesting of their hives on their own (which was great), but then rather than bringing the honey to process, without any warning, they just put all the honey buckets on the bus and sent it our way! 

We became a little overwhelmed by honey buckets in the midst of the Hive shop set-up that was also going on at the same time! Trying to organize workmen coming to fit furniture or fix electrics was a little tricky when the Hive was sticky and literally buzzing with bees after honey! Amisadai came on board to help out! 

Amisadai put in the honey hours

Hive action!

When Malya reported they had more honey harvested, we made it clear that a member of the group had to come with the honey .. and what a joy it was to welcome Mathias to The Hive and get more honey going through the filters and presses and into jars! Mathias returned to the beekeeping group in Malya with the exciting report that they had delivered over 80kg! The biggest harvest yet!

Bhatendi working with Mathias! Happy faces!

And with the next honey that came in, Bhatendi worked on training Monica in honey processing. Monica loved it ... and is now resident Hive expert at filtering, bottling ... and cleaning up the sticky mess at the end!

Monica in training on the job

Honey jars filled!

After processing the honey, Bhatendi and I got onto processing the wax. After pressing all the honey out of the comb, the combs were washed and put in the solar extractor for all the wax to melt and drip through. 

In the ensuing busy days, the solar extractor got rather forgotten and it wasn't until midnight on the night before we flew to the UK that I went outside to take the wax out! It was a lovely bittersweet moment, listening to the night sounds one last time in the still darkness. All our beekeeping has been done at night, a red torch spotlight with the crickets backing soundtrack. I will miss that smell of the wax heated in the sun, and even the stingers from the dead bees pricking my sticky hands!

And so we hope and pray that in years to come, The Hive will help and support more EI beekeeping groups and other rural beekeepers to better process and market quality honey in Mwanza. We hope it can become a centre for honey and beekeeping in this region, that people locally could learn more about beekeeping and the honey process. We hope that new beekeepers will find information and training and equipment in order to support livelihoods in the villages from the income-generating through honey sales and crop yield increases through pollination ... and as well, the natural environment will benefit from the bees and be protected through more sustainable beekeeping! 

Top-Bar-Bhatendi is doing a great job ... this week she was asked by Bees Abroad to go with Monica to a Beekeepers Seminar in Urambo and be part of training in hive making and honey processing while Monica taught groups on making products with beeswax. Both of these women are fantastic!

With the beekeepers at the Bees Abroad training seminar

Monica teaches balm and candle-making to a group at the seminar

We still have hurdles to jump as we navigate government regulations ... please pray for favour as Bhatendi and the team work things out! But we hope that The Hive will flourish and buzz for years to come! 

Bhatendi shows our colleagues, Peter and Laura, her processing room at the Open Day!

Opening Day at The Hive

On July 1st, we had the Opening Day of The Hive! It is simply impossible to sum up here all that went on into making this day happen! It was pretty insane, really! But it makes me think back to five or six years ago, before this was even a dream! I was sitting with five women in a primary school classroom, making beads out of recycled paper ... none of us had any idea that we would be doing this here now!

Some of the Upendo wa Mama Group with Bhatendi

Early Beginnings!

So what exactly is The Hive? The vision for The Hive is to be a place in the community where, by the grace of God, women disadvantaged by albinism can confidently stand, not only in order to better provide for their own children, but also in order to reach out to others in the albinism community, in particular to help children with albinism without families, and also to serve and benefit the wider community at large. We strongly believe that God has established the work of our hands at Upendo wa Mama and we are blessed to be a blessing to others!

Thanks to the very generous support from Under the Same Sun, we have the use of this, now-very-yellow building!

The main area is a shop, displaying and selling the beeswax products that the women have made in the workshop over at the Standing Voice property. The shop is also selling popular products from Neema Crafts in Iringa, beautiful things made by people with disabilities.

In the shop with Aikande, the Upendo wa Mama group facilitator

Monica and Jeni ready for business!

Looking through the shop to the workroom

In addition to the shop, there is the Honey Processing Room. The Hive, working together with EI Beekeeping Projects, will help and support rural beekeepers in the Mwanza region to process and market their honey. The Hive is a central place where village beekeepers can bring their raw, freshly harvested, quality-checked honeycomb to press and filter and get labelled in jars and on the shelf to sell! And Upendo wa Mama are happy to buy their processed wax for the workshop. Bhatendi, the EI beekeeping trainer, is already getting signed up for guided tours explaining the honey process. We hope this will be a fun part of what The Hive can offer to the community ... demonstrating very visually, the honey process and sharing the importance of beekeeping and value of honey!

Where the honey action happens!

Ready to filter, press and bottle!

There is a small workshop room for sewing projects and for the labelling of all the products made by the mamas; there is a storeroom/office and then a small kitchen with future dreams of its own! We are working alongside Mavuno Village, getting their fresh organic produce available for people in Mwanza to order and every Tuesday here is Mavuno delivery day! We are also working with both Union Coffee in Moshi and Tanzanite Coffee in Arusha to make their amazing coffee available to people in Mwanza ... orders are collected and coffee is delivered at the beginning of every month.

If you are local to Mwanza, you can pop by the shop on Makongoro Road or contact Upendo wa Mama on WhatsApp (+255 746 879 901) to buy beeswax products and sign up for coffee or organic produce deliveries. And non-locals can check out the catalogue on the WhatsApp number to order our products! Please do share our story and spread the word!

A busy workroom! 

The little kitchen ... now complete with an oven!

Mavuno produce orders ready for collection!

We are incredibly grateful to the many who have helped us... Elisha has helped with so much of the building and contractual work, Kate Winter has been awesome designing our logo and then Tahan Martins helping us to bring all the elements together to brand The Hive! Local artist Sappy made us an awesome sign and local carpenter Tabia has worked so hard making all the shelving and furniture! Many friends have been sounding boards and advice-givers! Amisadai and Louisa have been fantastic helping with all kinds of work from painting doors to cashier training to babysitting children! And we are so grateful for all the support from the Mwanza community, especially coming out on our Opening Day! As I write this, I am very aware of how much I am going to miss all the Hive action! But so very thankful for Aikande and Bhatendi who are carrying the work forward! And now to finish this post, here are some photos from our first day!

Busy sales!

Bhatendi explains the Honey Room!

Louisa at the Honey Treats table!

Children checking out the Nyuki Stix!

Laura and Peter celebrate the opening with us!

Great to have the Standing Voice team visit!

The Hive in the trees on the road between the airport and town!

With Love from Bath

As Winnie the Pooh said, "How lucky I am to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard."

We arrived, rather uncomfortably fully masked and shielded, and rather unfortunately minus some kilos of overweight baggage, in the UK on Friday. We have since been catching up on much missed sleep and rest as we begin our 14 day quarantine near Bath! Now trying to take time to reflect (as someone said, "bend backwards," to see things through a different lens) to appreciate just how privileged and blessed we have been over these last ten years in Tanzania, which made saying goodbye so hard. And taking time to reflect on the particularly crazy last month which I will try to sum up on the blog over the next little while! So much happened with the mamas and the beekeepers (even in the middle of the night before we left, I rather enjoyed taking beeswax from the solar extractor!) and now there's a new EI branch starting up ... all so exciting and good ... and yet makes saying goodbye so much harder!

Masked and shielded through Doha Airport

If you have been journeying with us through our time in Tanzania, you will know Elisha, our EI agricultural and entrepreneurship colleague! And I will start this blog post with some photos from his wedding! He and Sauda were married a couple of weeks ago, and it was wonderful to share in their special day! Peter, Bhatendi and Emmanuel were all very involved helping on the wedding planning committee. And it was also lovely to have the Upendo wa Mama group there... Elisha has been a huge help in getting The Hive going and also working with some of the women one-on-one as they think through entrepreneurial ventures they can begin with their profit from the group. We are all thrilled for Elisha and his new wife! 

I love the dancing gift-giving!

The girls enjoyed sitting next to Laura! 

Upendo wa Mama group all dressed up for the occasion!

A great Tanzanian feast! 

We were able to get some lovely "lasts" in over this past month as well as the bittersweet goodbyes. To name a few... we had a family picnic lunch up in our treehouse, we had smoothies and mishkaki at Umbrella, tangawezi sodas at the top of Gold Crest, lunch with friends at Malaika, and the girls ticked off a photoshoot, singing at the vomiting fish keepi-lefti for a bit of a laugh! 

Picnic in the top of the treehouse!

And  I have to include here some photos of various goodbyes for the blog record... some of the very special people who have blessed us and made it so hard to say goodbye! We love and will miss them all!

Saying goodbye to our amazing household staff!

Lunch with the Guild family

Pastor Tito and his wife came from Nyamililo for chai to say goodbye

A farewell from this wonderful community of expat friends! 

These special women!

Awesome bunch of kids!

Beautiful girlfriends!

A farewell feast with Pastors Mbuke, Zakayo and Charles and their families!

A farewell from our special EI Team

A special but very emotional farewell with the mamas group

 Final fun with Tabitha and Reuben on our last night in Mwanza!

And this was farewell to our Saanen milking goats,
 who went with Peter to start an EI livestock project!

Farewell to Mwanza as we began the journey to a new home in the UK 

And so for now we are making the most of quarantine! We are so incredibly well looked after by my wonderful Auntie Marian and Uncle Ian and enjoying a beautiful place to rest and amazing food to eat! We are thankful for the this time to reflect ... before we put our Big Boots on and go for our next Adventure!

“When you see someone putting on his Big Boots, you can be pretty sure 

that an Adventure is going to happen.” A.A Milne