Report on Hekima Project

"…Pastor Kent Wilson took video pictures of our trip, including the women’s project. He will make those pictures available, and they will show the vitality and enthusiasm that is there at the Hekima Project. That is the name of the project – it stands for wisdom. In my haste I forgot the couple pictures I had, but they don’t show much except a bunch of very smiley women. My visit to the Hekima Women’s Project in Dodoma was one of the highlights of my trip. They gave me a real sense of hope for Tanzania. In your meeting and talking with the women from Dodoma you may have sensed that the women are carrying that country. Not just because they do the majority of the work, which they do - this is not a negative against the men, but it’s just the way their culture deems it to be so. They do not have strong macroeconomics there, but they have a very strong micro- system there. By that I mean each household is responsible for its own economy, so there is a lot of trading in the market place - each person emphasizing what they have to offer. The women carry that burden well, as well as the burden of daily existence. It’s unbelievable just how much energy it takes to just survive each day.

"I want to say something about day to day life in Africa that was a revelation to me. Sometimes we might equate African, or southern hemisphere lifestyles with laziness, or non-productive – they don’t care about the future. But that really is not the case. What’s true about their system is because every day is pretty much like every other day. There is no worry about 4 months without sun or 4 months of winter, so they don’t really spend much energy thinking "we have to plan for the future, because the future might not have any resources for us to survive." Every day there are enough resources to survive for that day generally speaking (unless there is political unrest, war, or drought). Generally they are day to day living people because day to day they have a strong sense of the resources that God has given them to provide for that day. What they do quite well in that culture is they don’t accumulate more than they need to carry from place to place. Their requirements for food, shelter, entertainment are very much less that we require. So there is an incredible joy among the people.

"The other reason why I think the women are carrying Tanzania – maybe its just we’re the ones who give birth. We are the ones to grieve when we have to bury out children - which there are many of that they bury. We are also the ones who have to tend those sick and dying from AIDS – of which there are many. There is not one person in Tanzania who does not know someone who is dying of AIDS or has died of AIDS, mostly in their family. Every solitary person has been affected by HIV/AIDS. So maybe that’s why they dare to hope. But they do hope for the future. They are quite resourceful, so they take the gifts they have been given and they combine that with their hope for the future, & they are going to produce something that will be of benefit to someone other than themselves. One thing I did not encounter there is selfishness, especially among the women. I’m especially enthralled with the Hekima Project because of their executive director, Sally [Kingu]. I had the privilege in my life to be executive director of an agency that required a lot of juggling of funding, politics and different types of personalities, that I had to work with, so when I saw her gentle presence, but also she is so bright, and so comprehensive and so clear about what lies ahead of her - it hasn’t become overwhelming for her. So I just know that that project is going to produce many, many blessing in the live of the people that are there.

"What they do at the Hekima Project is they teach sewing skills, they provide sewing machines to women (They are, by the way, open to men also. There was one male student.) They also teach computer skills. They have micro-enterprise there. They give out micro-loans to set up their own little market shops. An they do that without trying to saturate the market with one thing. They are trying to plan that out so that many areas can benefit from their skills. So I think you can feel really good about your support of the project, and I feel that it does meet our global mission guidelines – for me it comes down to not doing any harm, or as little harm as possible. When humans get involved in human things, a component of it is always going to be some harm. I think we’ve got something called sin that makes that happen, but if we use our heads we can limit the harm we do. So we don’t want to burden them with any kind of project that in the long run is not going to sustain them, but instead is going to be a burden for them to have to carry. I don’t get a sense that with the Hekima Project – with their scholarships, their micro-loans, with the way that project is being managed, that the women there are really taking the lead, and what we do is a support for where they want to take their project. And that really excites me a lot. So I think you can feel really good about supporting that project, and also continuing conversations with them how to do that further.

"Another project that is just getting off the ground is the Diaconal Center. That is going to have a dispensary, and also they are going to be training some counsellors – something like Diane Sonnenberg does at LSS. In fact I think Diane may be going back some day for 6 months to do some training of counsellors at the Diaconal Center. That might something else you would want to keep on the horizon for support.

"I really don’t have anything else to report. I can answer any questions. Thank you for inviting me here today to at least share a little bit of my experiences."