ABOUT TEMEKE MIKOROSHINI AREA
Temeke Mikoroshini is about 18kms from Dar es Salaam City Centre. It is a very poor area with all sorts of problems. The area isn’t well-planned. It has narrow roads and very poor infrastructure. Most families are neither with proper toilets or no toilets at all. Neither do they have a proper sewage system. It has a makeshift kind of houses. A normal but stronger rain can easily destroy some makeshift and even hurt its inhabitants. Electricity is available for the able few. Unemployment is very high because there are no significant economic activities which can employ its inhabitants. Clean water is hardly available to many and hunger is a daily experience.
Amazingly, this is an area that’s full of very poor widows. Most of them very old & they are the holders of their big & extended families including their children and grand children. Having so many widows in one area may look quite astonishing! It is like they chose to leave in the same area because of their common problems & common struggle! It is hard to find an area in Dar that looks almost exclusive for poor widows like it is the case of Temeke Mikoroshini.
The area is Hard-hit by HIV/AIDS prevalence, TB, Cholera, Malaria, Diarrhea and skin diseases. According to medical data available at Temeke Hospital, child mortality rate is very high. Same as maternal deaths and deaths related to malaria. In short poverty manifests itself in all its forms at Temeke Mikoroshini.
A VISIT TO TEMEKE
Save Globe team visited a poor area of Temeke Mikoroshini on 15th February, 2009. The main purpose for the visit was to take M/s Sabrina Millet to the poor area which Save Globe has been trying to help by developing a number of projects to curb poverty & diseases. The team led by Elias Xavier (Save Globe co-founder) had 5 other members namely Sabrina, Shija, Mary, Sarah and Habibah. It assembled at Tazara main train terminal at about 10.30am and began the journey to Temeke Mikoroshini at 11:00 sharp. At Temeke Mikoroshini we were joined by Sarah and Mary. The entire visit took about one and a half hour of walking.
During the visit we met poor elders, orphans, some HIV/AIDS victims. We were able to see sick & hungry children and their families, water problems, children who are unable to attend school due to lack of fees. We saw makeshift kind of houses that are too dangerous to those who live in & many other signs of massive poverty in the area. We were able to see poor widows looking after their big and extended families.
