jake lyell photography (blog)

Tanzania is now my home for the next several months, possibly more. I’ve contemplated a move here for some time. It took a slump in the economy, the termination of my lease and a little divine shove to get me here, where I’ve been for over a week.

I’ve come out to work with Light in Africa, a (relatively) small NGO whose staff I’ve known many years. LIA has a variety of ministries including care and housing for over 150 orphaned or abandoned children, hospice and elder care for the aged, food kitchens and medical dispensaries. I’ve already begun making a multimedia presentation for Lynn Elliot, the organization’s founder (pictured above), in preparation for her upcoming trip to Germany and Holland. This is my primary task at the moment. Below, girls attend a weekend sewing class at LIA.

I also get to have an integral part with the day to day operations of the organization. There are over 150 children at LIA; each one needs individual attention and support. Spending time with the kids and being a positive force in their lives is more important than my documentary endeavors. Below, boys play cards under the shade of a tree.

Most children come to LIA when Tanzania’s Social Welfare department has deemed their home an unfit environment in which to raise a child – an abusive situation, parents have died and surviving relatives are unable to care for the child, etc. This week LIA took in two children from the streets of Moshi, the nearest sizable town. Both are around the age of 10 (they don’t know their own ages). Neither can read or write.

I’ve been dedicating much of my time to Yohannas, pictured above on his first night off the streets. He’s a good-natured boy, but has trouble communicating, sometimes preferring grunts and sounds to verbal communication. Friday I took him to the market and bought him a few new outfits – a needed makeover from his tattered and oversized street clothes. Yesterday he and I attended Easter services in Moshi with his friend Henry, a boy who has lived at LIA since 2001. Below, a Maasai boy uses his vestments to catch fish in a river in the town of Boma Ng’ombe, where Light in Africa has two children’s homes.

The great Mt. Kilimanjaro, when not concealed by clouds, watches benevolently over the homes and ministries of Light in Africa. It remains in sight even several hundred miles away from its foothills. Lately it’s had quite a dusting of snow on its peaks. As we’re now in the rainy season, the precipitation falls as snow in the higher altitudes. Below, the view from my house every morning.

My Swahili has improved, even in just the last week. It’s my goal to become fluent in the next six months. I’m taking private lessons one day a week and taking every opportunity to converse with and learn from my Tanzanian friends, all of whom are eager to help me learn more. Below, a woman in the town of Mererani.

In addition to its housing of the elderly and orphaned, LIA has been expanding into a seemly forgotten town of Mererani, an hour’s drive from the Kilimanjaro airport. In the dusty plains below the Eastern Arc Mountains lies Mererani, the world’s only known source of Tanzanite.

The presence of the gem in the hills above town hasn’t brought prosperity to its residents. Most of the wealth is held here by Tanzanite One, a South African mining company, or by many of the private owners who mine the precious stone from their own sectors, paying miners only when a gem is found. Below, women’s kangas hang from the washing line along a Mererani street.

Mererani is one of Tanzania’s poorest towns. Its geographic location doesn’t aid its economy. Sprawled along the northern Maasai Steppe, dry and parched Mererani is a flood plain for the draining waters from the nearby city of Arusha. After two or three days of heavy rains the town is rendered completely isolated as roads into town flood and become impassable. Below, cornfields along the road into town at sunset after heavy rains.

It is here that Mama Lynn, as Mrs. Elliot is known to Tanzanians, has chosen to re-focus much of her organization’s energy in the last year. Mererani is home to Light in Africa’s first permanent food kitchen, serving over 400 a day, six days a week. Most of the food is provided by the American NGO, Kids Against Hunger, while Light in Africa covers the costs of the facility and labor. Kids Against Hunger also provides much of the food that LIA serves in its children’s homes.

LIA’s food kitchen serves mostly children, most of whom are the sons and daughters of the miners working in the hills above town. Recently a group of adults has formed called Light in Africa group. The group, which has about 100 members not including children, is made up of HIV positive men and women. They approached LIA for help because they were not receiving enough food and nutrition at home and their health was declining. Below, Christina Manase, 32, is a widow living with AIDS in Mererani. She and her four children come to receive meals at the LIA food kitchen six days a week.

Light in Africa group members also receive breakfast each day. Nutritional upkeep as well as a routine antiretroviral drug regimen is essential for living a healthy life when HIV+. Since beginning the food program for adults, members of Light in Africa group have seen their CD4 counts skyrocket from the double digits to well into the hundreds, often reaching numbers of persons living without HIV. Below, Joycie Munisi, 50, is also a widow living with HIV. She and her five children are members of Light in Africa group.

In Africa, many NGOs partner together without even knowing it. The members of Light in Africa group are not helped solely by LIA. Every month they travel by bus to the city of Arusha, where the Italian charity DREAM (Drug Resources Enhancement against AIDS and Malnutrition) gives monthly health screenings as well as a month’s supply of antiretroviral therapy to the group’s members. The only problem is getting to Arusha, which is often a challenge from Mererani, not to mention a financial strain.

This month, a LIA volunteer from the UK named Ruth used some of her funds she raised in England to pay transport fees to and from Arusha for some 30 group members who needed assistance. Volunteers and the project money they raise before arriving in Tanzania allow LIA to make an even deeper impact in the lives of those they serve.

LIA asks that each of the volunteers that come to serve raise about $1000 for the organization. However, the money goes straight out into the community; 100% is used to help people in the surrounding area in need. LIA constantly keeps a file of the needs of Tanzanians in the area, a list that is seemingly endless. When volunteers arrive, they decide themselves what specific projects they’d like to fund with the money they’ve raised. Below, a girl on the streets of Mererani.

Through the volunteer program, medical clinics have been established, costly medical operations funded, tuition for school children paid and much more. Amina Lasta, 18, below, and her child Upendo, the eventuality of rape, were living in an overcrowded, dilapidated shack before LIA volunteers built her and her family a new concrete house in 2007.

LIA has achieved lasting impact in this area of Northern Tanzania. Its services continue to expand. This has been done without funding from grants or large partner organizations, whose money tends to follow along with the imposition of a strict bureaucracy. Funding largely comes from individuals and congregations, perhaps tourists who have passed through and are moved to do more than climb the highest mountain in Africa or snap pictures of game on the plains of the nearby Serengeti.

“The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few” (Matthew 9:37). Never have I seen a more fitting description of the work here in Tanzania, where the immense task ahead of us vastly outweighs those willing to take it on.

Visit Light in Africa.