Faraja Trust Fund Visit

Today we visited the Faraja Trust Fund in Morogoro. This organization deals with adults and children living and dealing with HIV/AIDS. Through micro loans to women for small businesses, education about HIV/AIDS, and education and care for children, they hope to decrease the prevalence rate from five percent of the Tanzanian population. They began working with sex workers in 1991, and since then, they have expanded and become more accepted by the community. We got to visit their HBC (home based care) center for children living with HIV/AIDS. Now they have approximately 120 kids they check in on through counseling, home visits and play dates to ensure these kids, who might only live until 20 years of age, have the best possible life. It seems like a really neat organization and they are making strides in the right direction to increase awareness of HIV/AIDS.

After visiting Faraja, we went out for lunch at a place called the New Green Restaurant. It was a cultural experience for all of us since we didn’t really know what we were ordering. They had it separated by meat category, but the rest of the words meant nothing to us. I think everyone ordered pretty well though and enjoyed the meal.

Today was probably the last day we made the trek to the orphanage. As always, the kids were ecstatic to see us show up and were really into the books today. Also visiting were some people from the YWCA in Finland that had partnered with the YWCA in Morogoro to help single mothers. It was neat to see other people visiting the orphanage and the children, but they could tell the kids liked us better! (I’m sure just because they knew us…) Everyone was a little disappointed to leave the kids this time. This weekend we will go to another village and prepare for our week of national park visits.

Playing Frisbee with kids  at Faraja