My name is Anna, I am a doctor, I live and work near Como, in Italy. In September 2007 I went on holiday to Tanzania with a group of seven friends. The trip programme, self-made, envisaged the visit to some different projects, from coffee plantations to Kilimangiaro, to some tiny Masai villages and a few days on a safari.. We then left the classical tourist itineraries to go deeper in the country and got to Dodoma where, thanks to a mutual friend, we met Giovanna and had the chance to know the Kisedet project. In the tourist guides the Dodoma region is described as “dry and not very attractive”, and probably I wouldn’t have decided to see it if it hadn’t been for the friend I mentioned before. Though, I assure you that what was left in our heart was not dry at all! In the tiny village of Kigwe we met the persons in charge for the single projects, simple and surprisingly enthusiastic people; together with them we visited the Pole Pole (slowly) project with its carpentry, tailoring, mechanic and agriculture workshops where the students learn something concretely useful for their future, a simple job which uses materials retrievable in their own villages, their own land; and machines, obsolete for us perhaps, though operable where water and electricity are a luxury. Human creativity and will are not lacking at all. These are jobs that lead them to produce something useful for their daily lives. Giovanna took us to the small orphanage she runs, and I do not deny that while stepping in I was surprised by its simplicity, there were a few pieces of furniture and simple cots, the kitchen in open air working with brace, a small classroom.. almost like a tiny village, a big hut… and there, a group of kids and teenagers with their smiles, with their colours, with their dances for us, with their want to communicate even when languages are so different. It took us a few minutes among those children and a few words from Giovanna to realise this is another project in which we can truly believe; these are not cathedrals in the desert, not structures meant to reproduce our life-style, but a structure that respects the reality in which these children were born and to which one day they will be back; and then, they will be able to recognise themselves rather than feeling disoriented. Some of us might not like this approach, maybe someone thinks that a production programme so closed in itself will never lead to progress nor wealth, it will never lead these people to our level of “civilisation” and “well-being”… If so, why many get back home talking about “mal d’Afrique”? I also felt such “mal d’Afrique”,and it was not the savannah, not the smell of the earth, not the colour of the sky… or better, not only this. It was above all the impression of a simpler life though more authentic; when I got back to my nice house, where everything was perfect, nothing was recycled  nor fixed, sadness caught me; it was their rhythms, that had seemed to me so slow and enervating, and that now I do miss so much, those rhythms that allow you to see and watch who is walking close to you, to get to know him or her; it was the greeting in Swahili, which was not a hasty “good morning”, but the greeting of a young man that meets an old lady in the fields and says to her “thanks mother for your work”.. this, and much more, we have lost as the price for our “well-being”. And this is why I do believe in your project, because it is simple and then realisable…pole pole.. not the usual grand and hasty project, bound to fail because it’s too pretentious and then forsakes these men and women alone with the heart full of promises we have not been able to maintain : I do believe in it because this project wants to help them grow… pole-pole, with their rhythms and their forces, not pursuing a progress that has cost us so many lost dreams, and many human relationships that we are not able to retrieve any longer, the serenity we look for in their land, the emptiness in the heart that, when back, we call… “mal d’Afrique”.

Anna Pirolo – September 2007