Am 21.

Am 18. November richtete sich der 1. Vorsitzende des DiADEM-Tanzania an alle deutschen Mitglieder:

Hello DiADEM members,

Hamjambo? Habari gani?

It s a great pleasure for me to get this opportunity of writing to you our friends in Germany. I hope it s a great pleasure too for your Tanzanian friends whom I represent and please receive warm greetings from us.

We have done laudable progress as to DiADEM projects. We finalized DiADEM Tanzania constitution, which is quite similar to yours and filed it at the Ministry of Home Affairs in Dar es salaam for registration. Eutropia, our Treasurer who lives in Dar es salaam, makes weekly follow ups to ensure we get registered soon. Unfortunately, our public offices in Tanzania are so bureaucratic that it will take us a few months before we are registered. Because of that, NGOs in Tanzania normally start their operations even before they are registered. Don t worry about this there is no problem. As at to date, we are 15 members of DiADEM Tanzania. We expect more new members.

By the election we held on 10^th August 2004 in Mpanda, our Steering Committee is found of myself as the Chairman, Mr. Samwel Nkuba as the Vice Chairman, Mr. Joseph Fungameza the Secretary and Mrs. Eutropia Pembe Machela the Treasurer. All of us have vowed to serve heartedly DiADEM Tanzania.

In August 2004, by your sincere assistance, we bought a 5 hectares plot in the name of DiADEM in Mpanda. It cost TZS 4,750,000/-. The plot is beautiful and it s close to the basic social services like water, electricity and communication. My Mpanda colleagues tell me that the road to the site is under construction by Mpanda District Council now and we have been given 3 hectares of land free by the council as they re-viewed our application at their quarterly meeting this month. We have now 8 hectares (20 acres) of land being DiADEM property and the boundaries have been extended. We are required by law to compensate some farmers who claim any property from the site. 17 farmers have raised claims. We may have more farmers coming in. Mpanda land office is assisting in identifying genuine claims in cooperation with us and some wazees from the area. Efforts to compensate them are underway. However, I should let you know that acquisition of the plot was not forceful and did not lead to misplacement. The area is part of Mpanda town master plan. No any farmer lived in the plot and the crops found are not the basis of their living. And compensation is normal for Tanzanians who illegally own the land. We have issues of compensation throughout the country whenever new plots are surveyed.

DiADEM is a great name in Mpanda and people are thirsty of seeing the results. I should say and extend sincere thanks to all of you in Germany, Mpanda District Commissioner, Executive Director and other district leaders, land office, local government councilors, education officers and students. We have maximum cooperation with the people of Mpanda.

The challenge ahead of us is to make correct use of the land we are given for it s by law that we should show signs of plot development within three years. I have discussed this with my friend Bernd. I hope your thoughts in cooperation with ours can decide how and what next as to our purpose realization. We ensure you of the reliable funds administration because we know nobody will donate further if the previous donations have not been accounted for and no body is ready to donate for no reason. Transparency, well stipulated, guides our actions and we want to be a good example in managing the foreign assistance. Moreover, helping the Mpanda people by building a secondary school is our mission.

At last, we wish you a fruitful participation and encourage you work harder on the course, as you know well our problems in Mpanda and challenges ahead of us.

Norbert Chunda

DiADEM Tanzania Chairman.

Am 30. August erhielten wir mit folgender e-Mail einen Report über die Fortschritte aus Mpanda, diesen möchten wir hier ebenfalls veröffentlichen:

Hello Bernd,

Finally I am back in the office. I arrived in Mwanza as planned, on August 26. All of us are fine by now after a long exhausting journey. We were in bed all over the weekend.

I wish to write you a DiADEM Mpanda report so far. Finally we got the plot in the name of DiADEM; 5 hectares of land located about 2kms west of Mpanda town along the road to Kigoma/Karema. It’s a beautiful fertile land close to the former German gold mines. On the east- west of the plot, there are small beautiful mountains. We paid TZS 4,750,000/- being the required government fees and survey charges. However, the land Title is yet to come from Dar es salaam and the Land Office in Mpanda will handle it to us when we are officially registered in Tanzania as an NGO.

One very important thing still remains. Compensation. DiADEM is required to compensate the farmers who owned plot land traditionally and have some fruit trees and crops. You may note that when we surveyed different plots for DiADEM, we were concerned with transport and availability of electricity, water and other social services. We also thought about finding the area, which would not cost us much during compensation. This area is the best and has lesser compensation cost than others. The district land officer estimated the compensation cost to be about 3,365,000/- TZS and he promised to assist us in calculating the entitled compensation. He urged us to do this during dry season when there are fewer crops on the farms. That being the case we request you to transfer about TZS 2,715,000/- to the DiADEM account in Mpanda so that we start and finish the compensation.

We hold a constitutional meeting as planned. We have 10 DiADEM – TZ founding members now namely Norbert (chairman), Samwel Nkuba (Vice Chairman), Joseph Fungameza (Secretary) and Eutropia Pembe (Treasurer). Others are Agnes, Protas, Athanas Mwakyusa, Elizabeth Mazala, Revocatus and Majilio. We have other members whom we supplied the Membership Data Forms. They are 8. We expect members to increase soon. There was great appreciation of DiADEM in Mpanda. It is the first NGO to operate in this region. It was decided during the meeting that each founding member should contribute TZS 300,000/- for starting DiADEM TZ Fund (although I know very few will afford that amount) as our efforts to encourage DiADEM Germany donors. Other members should contribute TZS 20,000/-. DiADEM members who were in Mpanda worked very hard in search of a plot.

There were some concerns about DiADEM from the members who met in Mpanda. The first was the suggestion that DiADEM should have an office in Mpanda so that other people of Mpanda get to know that we are really working in Mpanda. However, I reminded them that no funds have been budgeted for administration by now except if we donate our own money soon as agreed. I informed them that from my pocket we managed to open bank account in Mpanda and have a postal address, which is P.O.Box 332 Mpanda. Rafiki, you can now reach any DiADEM member in Mpanda through that address. The second concern was about school building. It was decided that the next step should be bricks making. It was suggested that this phase be done commencing on May/June 2005. Soil bricks cannot be made during rain season in Mpanda. It was suggested that Revocatus, Samwel, Protas and Elizabeth supervise soil bricks making in collaboration with the contractor. Very fortunately Revocatus have the skills in Bricks making. The cost for bricks making, remains as it is. These four have the task of identifying the people who will work on pay as inexpensive labour. The church of Mpanda, which you saw, was built on that way. The contractor should be involved to ensure the quality of the bricks. Dr. H. Krische might replace the contractor in that case if he is in Mpanda by then.

I have an observation: Since there will be a lot of postal transactions between Mwanza, Mpanda, Schenefeld and Dar es salaam by now, it becomes financially difficult to administer the transactions. I suggest we budget little money for such administration. For instance, when we want to draw some money from DiADEM account in Mpanda, I have to communicate with Samwel by EMS. Samwel may be sending fax to Schenefeld for quick information and a fax from Mpanda to Schenefeld costs about TZS 5,000/-

Am 21. Januar erreichte uns dieser offene Brief unseres Gründungsmitgliedes Norbert P. Chunda aus Tansania:

At first, I would like to congratulate you all for the different efforts you are showing which have enabled you to meet together today in the name of DiADEM. DiADEM mission touches every one of good will and thus there is no surprise if we get new members daily. It goes without question that all of you have different life commitments, but by your free will and decision, you spend much of your time to this association from when you joined to date.

Secondly, I wish to tell you that we, your colleagues in Tanzania, are determined to realize this dream, the dream of assisting our fellow poor people in the rural community at least get a light on how to sustainably till the land through knowledge. No body can question the importance of education. We would have run such a project earlier but we face a number of constraints. It’s a fact that Africa is full of poverty, diseases, hunger, war, bad governance and poor democracy. Bad indeed we lack visionary leadership in Africa. Normally, Leaders champion a number of things towards development. Leadership without knowledge is chaos and violence. That’s why we dream to have a school that can be a role model in educating our future leaders. I believe we can.

Now, as long as we have found you people of God who are ready to assist us we are determined to make good use of all the assistance you donate. We promise to be rational consumers for we know for sure, that it’s only by good use of such aids that we can get more assistance. We want you to trust us in that as we promise. We guarantee 100 per cent use of all the donations for the school project. Every one of you is invited to come and peruse our expenditure accounts at that time.

Thirdly, our side has undertaken several efforts. Bernd can explain to you more on this. However, all of you feel free to contact me directly in case you have more questions than answers to our project. I am fluent in English. Bernd can give you my contacts. But what we have to know clearly is that this project is not a small project. It’s big and expensive. In Swahili we have a wisdom saying that goes ‘Always the beginning is difficult and you can eat the whole cow and fail to finish the tail’. So let’s work harder, invent more mechanisms of raising the funds and make sure we realize our dream. Personally I promise more efforts after settling down at my new duty station.

Finally, though not least, we request you to have minimum ‘conditions’ (although I haven’t seen any to date) as it’s a fact that we know our social- cultural environment some how better than you do. And again that will help the project not being imposed on the people of Mpanda. Let your trustful representatives here coordinate and champion the projects.

At last I wish you a very fruitful participation in your meeting. I am sure we will be informed of what transpired very soon. Happy New Year to all of you.

Als erstes möchte ich Euch zu den Erfolgen, die Ihr erreicht habt und die dazu führten, dass Ihr Euch heute hier im Namen des DiADEM e.V. treffen könnt, beglückwünschen. Die Aufgabe des DiADEM e.V. berührt jeden mit guten Absichten und daher ist es keine Überraschung, dass wir täglich neue Mitglieder bekommen. Es ist ohne Frage, dass Ihr alle verschiedene Verpflichtungen im Leben habt, aber durch Euren freien Willen und Eure Entscheidung, gebt Ihr seit Eurem Beitritt bis heute einen großen Teil Eurer Zeit diesem Verein.

Als nächstes, möchte ich Euch erzählen, dass wir, Eure Kollegen in Tansania, entschlossen sind, diesen Traum zu verwirklichen, den Traum, unseren armen Mitmenschen in der ländlichen Gemeinschaft zumindest einen Schimmer davon zu geben, wie man von dem Land durch Wissen beständig leben kann. Niemand kann die Bedeutung der Bildung in Frage stellen. Wir hätten so ein Projekt schon eher ins Leben gerufen aber wir sind durch viele Dinge eingeschränkt. Es ist eine Tatsache, dass Afrika voller Armut, Hunger, schlechter Verwaltung und armseliger Demokratie ist. Es ist in der Tat schlecht, dass es uns in Afrika an visionärer Führung mangelt. Normalerweise, sind Führungskräfte Vorreiter für eine Reihe von entwicklungsfördernden Dingen. Führung ohne Wissen ist allerdings Chaos und Gewalt. Daher träumen wir davon, eine Schule zu haben, deren Funktion es sein kann, unsere zukünftigen Führungskräfte auszubilden. Ich glaube daran, dass wir es schaffen.

Nun, da wir Euch Menschen Gottes gefunden haben, die bereit sind uns zu unterstützen, sind wir verpflichtet, die gegebene Unterstützung gut zu verwenden. Wir versprechen, vernünftige Verbraucher zu sein, da wir sicher wissen, dass wir nur durch die korrekte Verwendung solcher Hilfe weitere Unterstützung erhalten können. Wir möchten, dass Ihr uns dahingehend vertraut, wir versprechen es. Wir garantieren die 100-prozentige Verwendung aller Spenden für das Schul-Projekt. Jeder von Euch ist eingeladen, die Konten für die Ausgaben jederzeit zu prüfen.

Drittens hat auch unsere Seite verschiedene Anstrengungen unternommen. Bernd kann Euch darüber mehr erzählen. Wie auch immer, Ihr alle könnt Euch gern direkt an mich wenden, wenn Ihr mehr Fragen als Antworten zu dem Projekt haben solltet. Ich spreche fließend englisch. Bernd kann Euch meine Adresse geben.

Was uns allerdings klar sein muß, ist dass dies kein kleines Projekt ist. Es ist umfangreich und kostspielig. In Kisuaheli haben wir eine Weisheit, die lautet: „Der Anfang ist immer schwer und Du kannst die ganze Kuh essen, aber den Schwanz nicht mehr schaffen.“ Laßt uns also noch mehr arbeiten, noch mehr Möglichkeiten finden, das Kapital zu vergrößern und sicherstellen, dass wir unseren Traum verwirklichen. Ich persönlich verspreche, mich noch mehr anzustrengen, nachdem ich mich an meinem neuen Arbeitsort niedergelassen habe.

Als letztes möchten wir darum bitten, die gestellten Bedingungen (auch wenn ich bislang keine gesehen habe) so gering wie möglich zu halten, da es nun mal so ist, daß wir mit unseren soziokulturellen Gegebenheiten besser vertraut sind, als Ihr es seid. Zudem wird es helfen, dass das Projekt den Menschen aus Mpanda nicht aufgezwängt erscheint. Laßt Eure vertrauenswürdigen Vertreter hier die Projekte koordinieren und vorantreiben.

Abschließend wünsche ich Euch eine sehr fruchtbare Teilnahme an der Versammlung. Ich bin sicher, wir werden sehr bald über alles, was passiert ist, informiert werden. Euch allen ein frohes, neues Jahr.