KILITECH WEEKY REPORT
Dated: September 12, 2016
INTRODUCTION.
This week’s main tasks have been village mapping, visiting villages where we plan and monitor the projects where by Nashon, Lydia and Ezra have been on the field for the tasks. We recently visited three villages out six found in East kahe ward which are Kyomu, Soko and Kochakindo village.
ACTIVITIES ACCOMPLISHED
THE MAPPING EXERCISE
The mapping was carried out well, from KiliTech offices to Kyomu village, then from Kyomu to Soko village then from Soko to Majengo and then from Majengo to Kochakindo village. It was tedious job but thankfully we got maximum cooperation from local government officer from everywhere we visited. Mapping exercise is expected to resume next week for the other three remaining villages.
KYOMU VILLAGE
The first village we visited was Kyomu village which is said to have the population of 2,574 (these statistics are according to Village Executive officer). In Kyomu Village we visited Kyomu dispensary (the only health facility found in the entire East Kahe ward). We were interested in knowing the following aspects;
Number of patients served at the dispensary
It was saddening to find that the entire ward (with six villages) having a population of 12,226 depends on just a single dispensary for medical care, worse enough, there were only five (5) health workers at the dispensary, one (1) Doctor with four nurses. If you divide the number of population and service providers to get a ratio of service provides and clients then you find that everyone is serving at least 2445( 2445:1) patients which is almost equal to population of entire Kyomu village.
Common diseases found in the area
The medical officers at the dispensary reported that most the common diseases are Thoracic diseases, Waterbourne diseases such as Diarrhea, Typhoid, urinary tract infection, Bilharzia and Sexual transmitted disease HIV inclusive. We were interested in knowing the rate of HIV AIDS.
The HIV infection is rampant in the ward, it affects both young and adults. The cause is said to be Risk social behavior such as alcoholism, early marriages’ (child marriages). They said that due to alcoholism female are obliged to take care of family due to irresponsible behavior of men as one said ‘
The number of infection recorded is 435, (173 being male and 262 female). These digits are said to be less than 25% of the total infection rate for majority of the infected are not ready to go for medical checkup in fear of being exposed, others go for checkup in faraway health facilities where they are not known so as to hide their identities. They said the number of infection can be more than three times of the available statistics something which is worrying.
The ward is said to have a good number of orphans which shows how the future of the village is in jeopardy. It is estimated that in the entire ward there are more than 500 orphans, some who are HIV Victims and some are safe from the disease but hardly surviving under the care of some relatives
The school has only five class rooms but has students from kindergarten to standard seven. The total population of the school is 306 students, according to government policy each class needs to accommodate an average of 30 students per class and maximum of 45 per class but here the number of students has far surpassed the required limit as the ratio of students against number of classes available is 60:1.
Due to prevailing situation the kindergarten class, standard one and standard two share the same class room, also standard five and six also share the same class. Only standard three, four and seven have their own class rooms, the teachers said that sometimes this leads to scramble for class room especially when both teachers of different classes want to teach, for example standard five English teacher attending the class and at the same time Standard six mathematics teacher is attending the same venue and students are in the same room.
SOKO VILLAGE
The second village we visited was Soko. In August KiliTech hired Zola Power to bring solar power to the school and the church. The installation even includes a solar power TV! This week we handed over the satellite dish to the teacher on duty. They were joyous and grateful for how KiliTech has been of great help in addressing the challenges facing their community particularly Soko primary school.
In this village we have promised to help them repair the septic tank for the primary school toilet that collapsed during May floods. Since May the teachers and students have been using a nearby field as the toilet and there is concern over disease and cholera outbreak. KiliTech is also helping build a kitchen for the preparation of the food for the children. We have also planned to help those children without school uniform get uniform through Nyota Njema sewing group, the sewing group KiliTech provided sewing machines and lessons in Majengo! There are about 45 children without school uniform and they are not allowed to attend school without a uniform but they cannot afford to get school uniform. We are coordinating with Nyota Njema to come to Soko Primary school and get the sizes of these children and make them uniform. KiliTech will provide the Nyota Njema group the materials to sew the uniforms and pay the women for their work and cover the costs of the uniforms for the children.
We also gave them the money for the installation of running the water system, about 1 kilometer from the well to the school, which we had promised them and they are digging the trenches and installing the pipeline. This is expected to be completed in the next two weeks!!
KOCHAKINDO VILLAGE
The last village we visited this week was Kochakindo village whose population is estimated to be 800 people, this is according to village chairman, and we found one dispensary built by government through Tanzania Social Action Fund (TASAF) which is yet to be opened, however it was pleasing to hear that there is outreach taking place once a month where by kids get vaccinated.
We also found a group of village members who are members of Rotating Saving and Credit Association (ROSCAS). These groups have agreed on the amount they contribute every month and the amount is given in a rotation to members as a way of getting funds to finance the small projects or needs that one cannot get from his or her own sources. We discovered that these group have poor finance management which may need intervention. They said that after long saving other may take money just for drinking alcohol!!
RECOMMENDATION
It is plausible that at least this group of poor people has decided to gather their strength to fight poverty; the problem is how they approach the problem. We suggest that in future that KiliTech may assist in two ways, one is to advice these people to join SACCOS, the second thing if they may be given entrepreneurial knowledge and vocation training, then this would help them in broadening their knowledge of the opportunities in their environment, where to invest and how to invest the little they have to get out of poverty
KiliTech Registration
We are officially registered and legally recognized as an international non Government Organisation authorized to operate in the whole of Tanzania main land, it took us a while but we finally have it!!!
New Employees
Beginning the month of September we have recruited two new employees. Lydia who is a GIS map analyst, will help map the area where we are conducting our projects, she will also help us in collecting non spatial and spatial data for analysis. During the first week of work Lydia has shown to be a very valuable asset for our organisation. We hope to work with her beyond data collection and analysis.
Ezra is our new assistant project manager who will be helping us with paper work and documentation of our projects. So far he has shown insight in report writing and managing data collected in the field, we look forward to improve our organisation with the help of these two young people.