Bukumbi Care Centre in Tanzania was built in the 1970s to care for people suffering from leprosy and other disabilities who had been ostracised from their communities and were living on the streets of Mwanza. In April, six employees of Schülke UK travelled to Mwanza to renovate the community hall at the Care Centre.
In a fortnight they transformed a dark, dirty building into a thriving community. Nicola Furniss of Schülke, based in Sheffield, describes what it was like to swap office life for manual labour.
“After a 12 hour flight we arrived in the blistering heat of Mwanza and had our first sight of the community building that was going to be used by the 250 residents of the Bukumbi Care Centre. The hall was over thirty years old and had been used by the residents on rainy days to cook their meals on open fires, with little or no ventilation. Not surprisingly, the walls were black and caked in grease and carbon.
“Our first task was to clean the building. There was no electricity or running water, so our cleaning materials were cold water straight from Lake Victoria, copious supplies of wire wool and Vim (which is still very popular in Tanzania). Fortunately we’d taken lots of Schülke rubber gloves and desderman hand sanitiser.
“After the first day of cleaning, we were all exhausted, but we quickly became acclimatised, motivated by extreme time pressures to complete the job. By the end of the second week the hall was clean, painted and ready for use. We’d even painted a blackboard on one of the walls.
“A hand-over ceremony was organised to give the community hall back to the residents .We decked the hall in yellow ribbons and drawings done by the local children. The residents all came along in their best clothes, including a man proudly wearing a fur hat and a tie.”
Residents can now attend training sessions in the hall to help them achieve their ultimate goal of independence. A group of women are using the facilities to make crafts and generate income rather than begging on the streets of Mwanza. A young albino woman with skin cancer now has a clean place to use her sewing machine rather than on the dusty floor.
An outside kitchen has been built which was partially funded by Schülke, so residents will not be using the new community hall for their cooking any more.
