Africa-Press – Tanzania. OVER 70 per cent of the Hadzabe community in Mkalama District, Singida Region, have started building better houses using a grant provided by Tanzania Social Action Fund (TASAF) through Poor Household Relief Programme.
This was revealed by several members of the community when a team of journalists visited Kipamba hamlet in Munguli village to hear success stories and witness challenges facing beneficiaries of the programme.
One of them, Agnes Israel, said that before TASAF introduced the programme for the poor in the area, her life was miserable because her family was very poor. She, her husband and their three children used to live in a grass thatched hut and depended typically on traditional life.
“My husband was always on the run hunting, gathering wild fruits, collecting tree barks, roots and harvesting honey to keep the family alive since those were our main traditional foodstuff” she said, adding;
“After receiving grants from TASAF, I started buying food, corrugated iron sheets; one at a time, then made clay bricks and began building a simple house that required no corrugated iron ridges (slope house). Now we no longer get wet when sleeping inside during the rainy season, unlike before” she said.
Chairman for the Hadzabe community, Edward Masimba said TASAF had changed the traditional lifestyle of the whole community in the area and begun living a modern life by building better houses, indulged in farming, rearing livestock while others were doing petty business in order to earn an income.
Munguli Village Executive Officer, Ismael Kitundu admits that the existing positive changes seen in the Hadzabe society have been caused by TASAF. “Out of the 250 households in the reserved forest, 175 of them consist of modern houses built using bricks and corrugated iron sheets” he said.
Despite the remarkable successes, the Hadzabe community say there are several challenges living in modern houses, including extreme heat during summer, disturbing noise during the rain caused by corrugated iron sheets, and failure to see from inside when an intruding enemy or wild animals approach, therefore the few conservative ones have left the modern houses to their children.
More than 250 Hadzabe households, popularly known as “Watindiga” in the reserved forest of Munguli village in Mkalama District, Singida region receive subsidies from TASAF under Poor Household Relief Programme.
