Mama Josephine Bakhita- Biography Part 1

Dear Friends and Family,

I apologize for not keeping up my blog in the last 2 weeks. To be honest, I feel settled now so have not experienced as much the need to keep a journal. But I know you love the stories!!! So I have several in store. This particular post I think is one of my favorite so far. I hope you will find it inspiring.
It turns out Mama Josephine Bakhita, the founder of the Amani centre (who is actually named after a Saint) has had a very interesting life. After many night time conversations with her, I have found her to be an inspiration not only as a woman, but also as person who has had many challenges in her life and has managed to always look forward and even laugh about it.
I thought her story should be shared so I asked her if she had a biography I could use for the blog. She did, but it was only 10 lines long. This is how I started meeting with her. She sat by my side telling me about her life story while I played journalist, asked questions and typed. Enjoy.

"I was born in Nthongolo Mountain in Makuyu village in 1948. I was the 4th and last child with two brothers and one sister.

When I was 4 years old, our mother died. My aunt adopted me and my brothers who were adults stayed with our father. I left the mountainous village for the district of Kilosa in Chakwale village.
From 1953 to 1957, I was in pre-primary school but in those days it was called bush school. My two aunts and uncle were supportive of my studies. After I started primary school. At the end of December1959, we moved to Mvomero. In 1960 I finished primary school there and the following year I moved to Mhonda primary school in Turiani. It was about 35 km from my home so I lived in the boarding school, which was run by nuns of the Roman Catholic Church. There I finished 4 years of upper primary school until 1964. My favorite subjects were Geography, History and Bible knowledge and of course English. In 1965 thank God I passed my exams and moved to Southern Tanzania to a district called Masase district where I joined Salvatorian secondary school, which was run by nuns of the Roman Catholic Church from Chicago, America. Most of my teachers were nuns and Peace core volunteers from America. In secondary school we got extra learning about social issues like psychology. My English teacher, Sister Genevieve campaigned hard for us to read so in my intensive reading, I read a number of books about social issues, culture, history and politics.

In March 1965 my aunt, Antonia Anton, who had adopted me when I was 4, died. She was the last born of my grandparents so carried the name of my grandfather. She passed away during childbirth but the baby survived. She was very loving and never beat me or scolded me and taught me a lot about life values. She never spoilt me and encouraged me to be active and work hard for things. The only thing I disliked was cooking because I didn’t like to sit down in the same place. So instead I helped with getting firewood, getting water from the well or milling maize using the mortar and pestle.
My aunt was also a religious lady so she brought me up to praise the Lord. Due to her way of life, I learnt to pray for the assistance of God. Her death disheartened me for many years and for at least two, I wasn’t myself. My father due to culture barriers and ignorance didn’t encourage me to go to secondary school and I only saw him on Holidays.
So after the death of my aunt, I was left without a guardian and felt like an orphan because since 1953, I wasn’t close to my father. I was unable to afford secondary school. It was during the school holidays that I realized I couldn’t go back to school and had to do something. So that’s when I decided to approach the Dutch missionary bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Morogoro. His name was Hermanus Van John Elswijk. My grades were average in every subject except Mathematics where I was very bad. Nevertheless, he still decided to help me.
When I was in my last year of ordinary secondary school, there was a nun who was giving us guidance to different professions. When it came to me, she spoke about teaching, being a nurse or secretary. Then she mentioned social welfare. As a profession it was regarded as very low but it is one that deals with handicapped and invalid people. Those two words were engrained in my head.
When I finished secondary school, the Bishop asked me to join a teacher’s training. I trained for one year as a teacher but decided to join the social welfare office in May 1970. I followed short series of training and one year of Home economics. It was in 1976 that my guardian Bishop and the government sponsored me for a three year advanced diploma in social work.
During that time of my life, in November 1973, I got married to my husband who was a banker. In 1974, I gave birth to a baby boy named Eric. After one year he suffered from Meningitis fever, which caused him to develop a severe disability both mentally and physically. I thanked God that I was a social worker as I understood and accepted the situation. I had met with many people with disabilities before through my profession.
But nevertheless, that’s when I experienced rejection from my community and my employer. My husband and I separated due to this in 1980 where we lived in Moshi at the time. After the separation, I moved to Morogoro and stayed in an old people’s home as I couldn’t find a home of my own, but my employer was not happy with that so I moved to Chamwino, a slum area in Morogoro.
My son was not accepted fully, as usual, women are often blamed for giving birth to children with disabilities. But it was at this poor, humble area of Chamwino that my son was accepted and it is where I had respect from the community. They accepted me, as they couldn’t believe an educated and literate person had moved to their area, as they were poor and illiterate. Most of them were clients who had been coming to my office and now they found I was living in the same neighborhood and they felt honored. I was still a full time social worker but I was trying to see how many hours I could put in to start an advocacy campaign for people with disabilities.
My son and I lived in very poor conditions. The mud hut itself was dilapidated and there was no toilet. It was just a pit, which was full and open with a few sheets hung around it for privacy. There was no running water so we had to fetch it a quarter of a kilometer away. Being a government employee my salary was very small for my son and a few extended young family members. But with all this poverty, I didn’t despair and continued to work toward better life conditions. I felt that given the situation, I had to do something.


In 1990, I identified 15 children with mental disabilities, and mobilized my fellow community of mothers to group our children for learning. This first class started under a mango tree. I continued to identify more disabled children, as there were many in Chamwino due to the poverty and illiteracy level. Chamwino being a slum area, families live in small quarters and abject conditions.
In 1991, I started to build the first part of what would become the Amani centre compound. I used my small life savings to finance it. Two sugar companies invited me to conduct workshops for their daycare teachers. What they paid me helped me to continue funding the construction of the Amani centre. When I had time, I also helped with hand labor for the construction. At that time, a Dutch family donated funds for my son’s tricycle. I used the leftover money from the purchase to buy construction materials for the building of the first house. I also received help from a Dutch organization that gave me a donation to finish the construction.
In 1992, the Amani centre began in a small living room with 25 intellectually disabled children. The same year I handed over the centre to the Catholic Diocese of Morogoro and remained there as the director, social worker and founder of the Amani centre for people with disabilities.
In those early days, we quickly reached a number of 45 identified disabled children in Chamwino alone. By 1994 we had identified 400 in the Morogoro municipality. By 1995, the Amani centre had grown into two buildings. In 1997, the Canadian Embassy funded the construction of a multipurpose hall, which is now used for daycare and different activities. In the centre of the compound, we maintained a flower and vegetable garden, which made the centre look completely different and a far cry from when it was just a mud hut.

During the Nineties (1992 to 1997), I ran Amani with a few assistants who had primary school level education. I carried out the activities and visits, which was a lot of work.
In 1993, I invited young girls and a few boys to live and work at the centre in exchange for secondary education. The idea came to me so I could help the poor sisters and/or brothers of the disabled. By educating them through secondary school and living at the centre, they were still with their siblings. Therefore they would be good caretakers for the disabled and be educated. I also wanted to help poor girls as for many years, girls’ education was not considered valuable in our society. I felt educating the girls was one way to help them to be good citizens in society and speak for the rights of people with disabilities.
After 1997, the centre had grown so much that we applied for a big plot of land In Mikese, 30 km away. I thought that the disabled youth that was now over 18 should have something to do. In Zambia I saw disabled youth be active in farming and animal keeping and gardening. So I thought it best to apply for more space where the disabled over 18 could live and work.


In those years, officials from Caritas Netherlands (present Cordaid), asked a volunteer to advise me, as Amani was too much to run by myself and a handful of professionals. So that’s when I hired more people: a bookkeeper, a vocational training teacher, social workers and a nurse.
The Amani centre then became a full administrative organization and I was able to delegate some activities and focus on management and development. Since 1994 I have been traveling to attend different workshops. The first one was in Jamaica and led me to create CBR (Community Based Rehabilitation). I have also traveled to a few African countries: South Africa, Lesotho, and Zambia. In Mauritius I learnt how much parents there care for their disabled children. I also traveled to Europe: Norway, the Netherlands, Denmark, Italy, and Great Britain. My experience there taught me that due to good resources, the government there cares to see every citizen gets his or her rights whether disabled or not. One idea made me sad when I visited the North of Norway. There my host told me that in their area no disabled children are born due to early termination of difficult pregnancies. Otherwise, in developed countries, the parents are empowered by the government and receive good services for their children with disabilities a well as equal opportunity.
It’s at this point that I felt guilt when I visited centers for intellectually disabled. I thought what good am I doing to the disabled I have identified in Tanzania Morogoro after seeing how well the disabled were taken care of abroad. I am not giving them quality services like in the other countries I have visited. So when I came back I continued to advocate for the rights of the disabled through the Amani awareness group, home visits, CBR, press interviews, televised workshops and seminars.

Since 1995, Amani gained international credibility due to receiving foreign volunteers and organizations. They raised awareness in their respective countries and have carried on helping us.
The Amani project has changed my life. Before I started, I was always feeling a sense of guilt because I thought I had failed to be a family woman. I was a failure not to raise more children and sometimes I felt I lost confidence in society due to having a child with disabilities. I even felt like personally I am disabled. Also, I didn’t have confidence in my work, my family members. So after starting the Amani project, identifying many families with disabled children, I gained courage and felt a sense of purpose.

In 2002, we carried out a demonstration for our 10-year anniversary, which was a milestone. It was time to evaluate our achievement, the positive and the negative and to set new goals for the next 10 years.
But the year that followed, in 2003, I suffered two major personal blows. My niece Elena had been sick for a long time and was very close to my son Eric. They loved each other and even shared clothes as they had grown up together. They were both first born and shared a close bond. But for a long time, my son did not see his cousin at the Amani compound because she was too sick to visit. When she was taken to the village, he knew something was going on. On the night between the 9th and 10th of April, news broke that his cousin had died. On the evening of the 10th, the youth at the Amani compound were having a night vigil, singing solemn hymns in memory of Elena and he participated fully. Later on he felt sleepy so the youth escorted him to his room. The morning of the 11th, the caretaker went to his room. Being a young girl, she could not understand the condition Eric was in. I was not at the centre that night. After asking a nurse who was a neighbor to come examine him, she pronounced Eric had dyed 3 or 4 hours earlier. The whole family was in the village mourning the death of Elena and the afternoon before he passed away, was when they buried her. So at 12 noon, on the 11th, is when news broke at the village that Eric had dyed as well. This shocked the family members, the village community and for me, I was almost tong tied because he was the most healthy community member at Amani despite his disability. I think at the moment when he dyed, I was dreaming that 2 walls at the Amani centre had collapsed. So the following day at 12 when we received the message, I told the community I am sure when he was dying I had a dream of a wall falling apart and thinking how will I manage to repair this wall. To this day I cannot bare the thought that he dyed in my absence. The youth at the centre did not know how he felt, or how to really understand how to help him. After the news, Uncle Toni, his wife, some family members prepared the body and came back. The following morning of the 12th of April, he was buried. So this was a big sad event for the family loosing two members in 2 days. The cousin was buried on the afternoon of the 10th and that night, my son dyed and was buried the 12th.
I was so wounded, that the whole of 2003 I could not work to my full capacity. In May I traveled to the Netherlands and thought I might forget my sadness. Fortunately enough, the organization there knew what had happened to my son. So whenever I visited, there was a moment of short mourning. Even after coming back, I could not concentrate much on writing so I depended on Uncle Toni to write short messages that I felt were important. But even in that sadness, I vowed and prayed to get much courage to serve the disabled. "

TO BE CONTINUED....