Elly Kimbwereza, Tanzania:
\”I was born in poverty but poverty was not born in me.\”
I vividly remember my childhood days in the Pare mountains of Tanzania
as a child of a church Minister.We comparatively lived a better life
than our neighbors and this disturbed me very much because all my play
friends belonged to the neghborhood . I later came to learn a very
strange story that all us children in that village including the
children of the Minister are very lucky because we could have been
killed at the time of our birth if we had our upper incissors coming
out fisrt or any abnormal mark on our bodies. There was a special rock
which is still there in the village[Malameni rock] where children were
taken for these superstious killings.This story touched me so much
that I made a commitment to go back after my college education and do
something that would make every body proud to fight these superstious
beliefs.
So we had something in common as children just as we have many things
in common for the survival of human kind
Poverty is the biggest challenge in this village and I thought by
introducing an Idea of working with the communities through the Tona
[TOURISM OF NEW AGE] and using this village as a model may be the
current suffreing of children dying of Hiv/ aids and related
problemscould be eradicated. Atually even today village people think
that AIDS is caused by being Bewitched .This sounds like a story but
it is real life situation. that exist today and I am happy through
Pamoma.com I can share it to the world.Hopefully going through my Web
page at www.tonalodge.org more people can learn and probally
sympathise with our terrible suffering in the midst of pockets of
Paradise on earth .I still wonder today whether God is Looking.