MABWEPANDE CAMP ON PHOTOGRAPHS

Rt. Rev. Bishop Desderius Rwoma entering one of the tents at Mabwepande Camp

The view inside the tent

Mabwepande camp site

Bishop distributing items to affected family

Team deliberating outside the tent

Worn-out mattress inside tent

Deliberations outside the tent

The team listens to the camp leader

Offl-oading goods from truck at Mabwepande

at one of the camp's tents

Paul Sangu, Fr. Vitus Sichalwe and Bishop listening to a welcome speech by the Boko parish

Rt. Rev. Bishop Rwoma speaking to some of the affected families

Fr. Vitus Sichalwe speaking

One of the scene at the camp

Another scene at the camp

EMERGENCY AID FUNDS FOR PEOPLE AFFECTED BY FLOODS

EMERGENCY AID FUNDS TO SUPPORT FAMILIES AFFECTED BY FLOODS IN DAR ES SALAAM, TANZANIA

Background and Overview

SSVP’s leadership at the headquarters in France received the bad news about the floods in Dar es Salaam sometime in March 2012 and responded by extending humanitarian support aid worth EUR 3000 as an initial installment for the families affected by floods in December 2011. The local bank in Dar es Salaam through the Tanzania Episcopal Conference (TEC) relayed the information to SSVP Tanzania about the arrival of the said funds and that US$ 3,825.30 (equivalent to TZS 6,006,500/=) had been credited to the TEC’s account for that purpose. The exchange rate at this day was about 1US$=1570.204 TZS.

The SSVP’s Interim President for Tanzania sat down to prepare a budget together with the head of the Lay Apostolate Dept., Fr. Vitusi Sichalwe and identified various items/goods to be purchased for the support mission. The job included the identification of a team of representatives among the church leaders to be present during the event for the hand-over of the items to the affected. The cash was issued from the TEC’s office on 14^th May 2012 and the purchase of the items was done for two consecutive days from 15^th May to 16^th May 2012 when all the items had been bought and collected at one place.

Hand - Over of the Items to the Affected Families

On 28^th June 2012, the team led by the chairman of the TEC’s Lay Apostolate Department, the Singida diocese bishop Rt. Rev. Desderius Rwoma, travelled to Mabwepande area in Kinondoni district to hand-over the goods to the affected families.  The team also included Paul Sangu, the interim President of SSVP in Tanzania; Rev. Fr. Vitus Sichalwe, the Secretary of the Lay Apostolate Dept.; two members from the TEC Secretary General’s office; a representative and journalist from the TEC church’s newspaper namely the “Leader”; one representative from TEC’s Finance Dept. and the priest of Boko parish, whose territory harbours the camp of the affected in Mabwepande area.

The whole process of distribution of the items, including the identification of the first recipients’ group of needy families was done carefully, with the participation of sub-parish leaders who were among the affected and conducted mass and prayers with the support of the camp leadership.  Among the 800 families living there, only 220 families were selected to receive the support in the first batch of items purchased by the aid funds.

 

Worrying about the congestion of people at the camp, it was advised that the distribution be done at the church premise which is located close to the affected families’ camp. Among the 220 affected families, 100 people were Muslims, 80 people were selected from other denominations while 40 people were Catholics.

The exercise to distribute the items was preceded by the greetings from the bishop Desderius Rwoma on behalf of all the Tanzanian bishops, since at the time of this event; the Council of Bishops meeting was taking place at the TEC’s Headquarters. The bishop shared sympathy with the affected and from his peer bishops for all the troubles the affected families had been dragged into and promised to pay another visit to the camp in case it happened that they received another aid support in the future.  He informed the affected families that the aid was provided by the Society of Saint Vincent de Paul in France through its Tanzanian office.  The report of this aid was also shared in the TEC’s conference with all the Tanzanian bishops attending, which brought out an applaud and praises for the SSVP’s Tanzania office for the effort on alerting the SSVP headquarters who eventually extended their hands to bring support to the flood- affected and needy families in Tanzania.

Summary of Items Procured for the Affected

S/No.	Item description	Amount in TZS	Equiv. US$
1	Washing soaps	950,000.00	605.02
2	Cooking oil	845,500.00	538.47
3	Toilet soaps	928,350.00	591.23
4	Maize flour	792,800.00	504.90
5	Match boxes	420,000.00	267.48
6	Salt	710,000.00	452.17
7	Sugar	425,000.00	270.67
8	Tooth paste	548,000.00	349.00
9	Sayona soft drink	120,000.00	76.42
10	Transport and Fuel	266,850.00	169.95
	Total	6,006,500.00	3,825.30

TZS 266,850/= equivalent to US$ 169.95 was used to hire transport for the goods to the camp including the purchase of fuel for bishop’s vehicle during delivery of items.

Challenges Faced at the Camp by the Affected Families

After distribution of the items to the affected families at the church premise, the team decided to go around the camp itself.  Since the transfer of the affected families to this area, they were still living in tents provided by the Red-Cross Society in Tanzania.  The tents were arranged on plots of land provided to the affected by the government. It might be recalled that during the floods, their houses were carried away by floods, destroying most of the properties and making them lose essential personal belongings.  Due to that reason, the affected families arrived at the camp with very few if not nothing at all or completely empty-handed to depend on for their subsistence.

What was seen at the camp was very devastating. Almost 90% of the families sleep on bare ground, most of them laying down the torn-out pieces or sheets of clothing. It was told that some of the affected families had received one bed-sheet each when they firstly arrived at the site. Up to the time we were leaving the area, we had heard that about 7 people had been bitten by snakes due to the fact that the camp was covered all over by the bushes, though efforts to clear the site had been just started.  Those with families used hard paper boxes to divide the tents inside space during nights when sleeping.  Most of the affected were old people who did not have any income generation activities, waiting to get short-time casual work which was also not forthcoming at all. The affected families were those who had built along the river banks and valleys because they lacked the capacity to purchase the land plots for building decent houses for shelter.

Other Necessities Required by the Affected

The most needed support at the time of visit included sleeping beds, bed-sheets and blankets, cooking utensils and appliances (cooking pots, pans, plates, cups and spoons).  Others were school fees and uniforms for primary and secondary school children. Based on the number provided to us by the camp leadership, there were about 43 children going to school in the camp at the time.  Food with short shelf-life was also needed to minimize cost on cooking using firewood or other costly sources of energy at the camp. The current market price for one mattress is TZS 120,000/= (equivalent of US$ 76.4) and a bed is sold at TZS 140,000/= (equivalent of US$ 90).  Rt. Rev. Desderius Rwoma and the accompanying team thought of proposing some small projects for them so they could at least get themselves somehow busy to earn their daily meal.  What one might keep asking was what would happen to some of these families when the tents got worn-out because some of the tents had already gotten in bad shape.

Appreciation and the Vote of Thanks

Apart from personal thanks offered by the chairman of the Lay Apostolate Dept. of TEC Rt. Rev. Desderius Rwoma, to the SSVP headquarters, the Council of bishops through the Secretary General of TEC, Fr. Anthony Makunde congratulated and thanked SSVP headquarters so much for the readiness and cooperation towards the needy Tanzanian brothers. To confirm this, the interim president of SSVP office in Tanzania talked to some of the bishops and they congratulated SSVP’s leadership in France and promised very close cooperation, starting with TEC itself, Boko parish and the leadership of the affected families at the camp.  In all the places, the leadership offered thanks and congratulated SSVP and promised to pray for them to be blessed with more resources that could enable SSVP reach out to more needy people around the world.  The appreciation by the affected was published on page 5 of the church’s weekly newspaper column namely “Kiongozi” or in English “The Leader” (www.kiongozi.co.tz )  of 6^th – 12^th July 2012 Issue No. 27.

Delays on Hand-over

Distribution of the items/goods to the affected families somehow delayed following the request submitted by the Rt. Rev. Desderius Rwoma, to await his coming to Dar es Salaam from Singida for the meeting of the Council of bishops which was planned to be held at the end of June/beginning of July 2012.  What the bishop pledged was to make this event a special one for the Tanzanian Catholic church, and that is what it turned out to be.

Some of the photographs taken during the event are attached to this report for review.  Many thanks are due to SSVP leadership at the headquarters for accepting our pledge and for the great cooperation they provided to the needy families in Tanzania.  May the God’s blessings be upon the leadership, management and staff of SSVP at the headquarters in France, thank you.

SSVP, Tanzania office

July 2012, Dar es Salaam

SHORT REPORT ON DAR FLOODS

FLOODS WHICH HAPPENED IN DAR ES SALAAM, TANZANIA IN DECEMBER 2011

Heavy torrential rain poured in Dar es Salaam on Monday December 19, 2011, accompanied by lightning and heavy thunderstorms.  It continued to rain until Saturday night on the x-mass eve to Sunday morning.  The rain caused heavy floods in different areas in Dar es Salaam.  The rain also caused  a disaster due to flooded rivers as lives were lost.  The road/bridges and buildings/homes infrastructure were destroyed by floods.  Despite the warning from the meteorological department that there could be heavy rains due to temperatures rise, the people residing in the valleys, especially the Jangwani area in Msimbazi river valley did not respond positively to the call and they did not abandon their homes to safer areas.  The picture above shows the flooded Jangwani area of Msimbazi River in Dar es Salaam.

Sad news of loosing lives spread all-over Dar and outside. More-over, the floods left many of these people without homes, as rain continued to pour down for more than 6 hours a day.  Given the fact that Dar es Salaam city is the biggest in the country, in terms of population and business activities, still it does not have sufficient and reliable infrastructure and good systems to sustain heavy rains.  Even the lack of mitigation measures to curb such natural calamities increased more risks.  The most needed support was not available immediately until the army team of rescuers came into action, almost too late to minimize the effects of floods.

Advisory was given out not to visit the city centre during this time of the day, especially for people residing in the Dar suburbs who do their businesses at the city centre.  They were advised to remain in-doors in their homes to reduce congestion as well as assist the rescue efforts provided by the army to the victims of floods.  Some people were stuck on the roads for hours, sitting in cars hoping to see the rain subsided in vain.  The rain was there to stay and it lasted for five whole days non-stop.  Picture on the right shows The Prime Minister of Tanzania Mr. Mizengo Pinda speaking to the victims at a temporary camp established at the Mkapa Secondary School in Dar es Salaam.

Staff of Tanzania Red Cross Society provides services at the flood affected families at Mabwepande area in Kinondoni district outside Dar city. The camp was prepared as temporary shelter for the affected families while they awaited the allocation of permanent residential plots to be offered by the government. Some 200 tents were provided by the Red Cross Society.  The picture on the right shows the Red Cross staff sticking a Red Cross sticker on the tent set-up by the society at Mabwepande area, outside Dar es Salaam.

SUPPORT PROVIDED BY SSVP IN TANZANIA

Given the situation of SSVP in Tanzania, support was organized based on the basic needs requirements by the affected families, which included food-stuff such as sugar, washing and toilet soaps, bread and flour.  The total amount spent for this humanitarian support was about TShs. 300,000 (equivalent to US$ 200).  These came from individual efforts and contributions from those touched by the incident. The picture shows the affected families being transported from Benjamini Mkapa temporary camp in Dar es Salaam.

LESSONS LEARNT FROM THE EVENT

In principles of emergency preparedness and response, relevant authorities and the community at large did not respond in time to deliver the much needed support, from making pre-disaster preparation, coordination on disaster preparation itself, disaster response and even post-disaster analysis to evaluate the whole situation of the floods and flood victims.  It was in everybody’s expectation to anticipate that the concerned authorities would take necessary steps towards assessing the risk before-hand (undertaking risk analysis) and determining what would be the action points if such event happened, what kind of support would be needed to the affected families and how those affected would be helped out of the situation at the right time and efficiently.

It is in our opinion that the disaster fund administered by the Prime Minister’s Office should go further to mobilize and provide support for coordination, organization of rescue trainings to special groups like army personnel and other special disaster rescue teams to ensure minimum damage and loss of life to people, infrastructure and damage to family assets in the future.  We think taking pro-active steps to plan for disaster, disaster management and control will be crucial learning point in the coming years to avoid recurrence of such losses.  The picture shows food being prepared for the affected at a new camp in Mabwepande area in Dar es Salaam.

BASIC NEEDS AND SUPPORT REQUIRED BY THE VICTIMS

At the moment, flood victims need bed shits, blankets, uniforms for school children, school fees, beds and basic home furniture including clothes.  The picture on the right shows some of the affected flood victims arriving at the camp in Mabwepande area in Dar es Salaam.

March, 2012

Dar es Salaam, Tanzania