MANDAKERENGE ISLAND
Projects 

In 2024, we will resume contact with Mandekerenge Island to define actions to improve the living conditions of the nearly 4,000 people who live on this island, which shares Lake Tanganyika with Kigoma and where last year, at a first visit, we pre-identified several needs transmitted by the local population.

Mandakerenge Island (or Manda Island) is a small island south of Lake Tanganyika and 500km from the city of Kigoma, in the Rukwa region, which lacks infrastructure and resources, which constantly puts the well-being and health of its inhabitants at risk.

In Mandakerenge we met with community authorities to discuss the challenges they face as a community:

• We received explanations from the district engineer about the proposed project to bring drinking water to the island, one of the greatest concerns for everyone, and which leaves its inhabitants exposed to frequent diarrheal diseases and even occasional outbreaks of cholera.

• We visited again the maternity building that they began to build with community funds, but which is in the process of being finished and only the outer structure could be built, so that at present the women of the island have to give birth in a tiny, unequipped room in the precarious dispensary next door.

• The leaders of the only school on the island that serves about 800 children told us about the lack of furniture and toilets that meet the needs of all the students.

Thanks to our own resources generated by membership fees and one-off donations, we took advantage of the trip to formalize the purchase of the necessary wood and carpentry for the production of desks, tables, chairs and shelves for the school and also for the community office, which will be made on the island itself.

From now on, we will continue to keep the needs of the island in mind, and we will seek funding to be able to continue to address its priorities and strengthen the quality of life, education and health of all its inhabitants.