Dear Friends!!!
Greetings from HUYAWA, Bukoba !!!

Today we want to introduce you to one of the recipients of your generosity.

09 September 2001

Nenga Newa is a young man of 25, with a wide smile and friendly manner.  He was happy to relate his story while sitting on Sister Debora’s verandah overlooking the pleasant town of Bukoba and Lake Victoria.  For a moment it is easy to forget that this town is at the epicentre of AIDS in Tanzania. The first cases were discovered in 1983, although HIV was most likely present at least a decade earlier.

By 1987 over 24% of inhabitants of Bukoba were estimated to be living with AIDs, compared to a national average of 7%. Now thanks to organisations such as HUYAWA the figure is somewhere closer to 17% - its still too high, but is a sign that individuals are beginning to changing their sexual behaviour. 

While Nenga recounted his life dispassionately in English and Swahili, it was hard not to be moved. He lost his mother Constancia to AIDS when he was 14 years old. She bore three sons to three men; Nenga is the oldest, followed by Maxmilian (21) and Benettson (18).

He has never met his father Twaha, but remembers leaving Dar es Salaam with this mother when he was a small boy to move to Bukoba to the family plot, to live with his uncle, his wife and four children, squeezed in a house with two rooms. A glance at his family tree would reveal how sexual networking is responsible for spreading the scourge that is AIDS. By now Constancia’s other two brothers were already dead. As the story unfolds we learn that both her second and third husbands died of AIDS. Benedicta, the last husband had already lost his first wife to AIDS. Although Nenga is unsure, it is probable that they all died from AIDS.  Many Africans are coy about discussing sex. People know that disease is all around them, but because of its link with sex, there is still a reluctance to talk about it.  This is a culture that values dignity over saving lives.

Nenga and his brothers were robbed of a childhood, Constancia fell sick in 1986. As is the pattern of AIDS, she succumbed to a series of opportunistic infections, skin diseases, oral thrush, pneumonia, and in the final stages, vomiting and chronic diarrhoea. The last two years of her life she did not move from her bed, her sons nursed, bathed, and attended to her bodily functions, trying to feed her. In the final few months the boys took turns to stay away from school to tend their mother. When asked if his schooling suffered, without a trace of self-pity, Nenga replied, “ it wasn’t a loss because I was looking after my mother”. When she died there was no money for a coffin, she was laid on branches of a tree, the shroud her clothes. As is the African customs, family and neighbours prepared a large meal, and the boys remained at home in mourning for seven days.

The traditional coping mechanism of family has gone a long way to lessen the impact of AIDS deaths, with relatives absorbing the children of the dead into their extended families. However, some communities are becoming saturated with children, and families cannot afford to feed another mouth.  In the case of Nenga, his family was broken up, his brothers sent away to live with their fathers’ families, Nenga remaining with a married uncle and now six children.

With HUYAWA’s help, Nenga finished both primary and secondary school, and then spent three years at farming school, no mean feat, when you take into account World Bank figures that estimate that the secondary enrolment rate in Tanzania is only 7%.

This tale has a happy ending.  With your support, HUYAWA is able to support Nenga, enabling him to now join a farming settlement, established by the Evangelical Lutheran Church. It aims to provide plots of farmland to those who would otherwise be landless. Kajunguti lies 50 kilometres from Bukoba, the land is fertile, with a safe water supply and a school. Nenga is to be given an acre of land to grow bananas, maize, and coffee, and a start-up fund of £30.  The work is hard, with only one tractor for 72 farms, but with many ‘orphan’ farmers the community is close and neighbours will help him build a home and share the labour. He will never be a rich man but he will not starve nor join the fast growing generation of young orphans and adolescents who live on the streets in deep poverty, providing a nexus for another generation of infection.

This is why your continued support is vital to the lives of these young adults. Nothing can replace the trauma of losing a parent or a lost childhood, but because of your generous assistance, HUYAWA is able to provide young men like Nenga, with an opportunity to build a life and to break the cycle of poverty and death.

Thank you for your prayers and support

God Bless You!!

Yours  in  service
Debora

Now HUYAWA has its own bank account:-
The National Bank of Commerce
Jammuri Road
Bukoba Branch, Bukoba
Account No: 52148
Account Name: HUDUMA YA WATATO (HUYAWA)
Address: ELCT – NWD
PO Box 98, Bukoba, Tanzania