Tour Travel Agent - Tourism in Tanzania Helping In the Community

Make tourism responsible. Ensure the company you choose for a safari in Tanzania help with community projects. Safaris help to fund projects to rehabilitate these children. Community development is needed to help more street children like Stambuli; below is the storey of Stambuli.

And together with friends smoke and drink until the money was gone, when he had money he would play cards and gamble down by the village stream. As he grew he moved on to stealing bicycles and even the odd spot of prostitution to get a good meal and a dry roof over his head for the night, stealing papaya from neighbours trees when he was hungry; to survive he became a thief. From the age of eight he smoked marijuana and drank home brewed alcohol. Stambuli grew up on the streets of Arusha in northern Tanzania.

Because of his size and growing up on the streets he managed to push his way to the front of the competition and get work, waiting with the other boys for the next bust to arrive; he would sit in the dust at the side of the road. At the age of 16 he began to work mornings at the bus terminal offering to carry bags and earn a few shillings for himself, eventually. When money was needed again he would walk into town and steal a bicycle and as he got older and became a strong 15 year old standing 6 feeg1inch in his bare feet he became more adept and intimidating with his thievery.

He had never seen his father but told his friends 'one day I will travel and meet my father'. Stambuli would talk affectionately of his father who lived by the coast close to Tanga Bay. Stambuli's father had abandoned him whilst he was still in his mother womb.

This man was the main male role model in Stambuli's life. He had murdered a man and regularly beat his wife. Graces father was a small time drug dealer. Graces father was Stambuli's brother. Grace, he would give to his mother who was a widow and was raising her granddaughter. Not all the money would go on drugs and booze.

Grace the child to the marriage was then abandoned as the mother fled to Dar es Salaam. Stambuli would visit his brother every week and remembers the day he arrived to be told his brother was dead and then given his brothers body. After a year in prison he committed suicide. Stambuli's brother was eventually arrested for the murder and put in prison.

There was no room for Stambuli and he would sleep next to the river or occasionally at a friend's house. Stambuli took Grace to his Mother and she cared for the child and Stambuli went to work at the bus Station to earn money for food; all was taken from the house except for Grace. Elders of the village deemed Stambuli unfit to have anything of his own and they took the belongings from the house for themselves. Stambuli was left the contents of his brother's house but he was not allowed to keep them.

He was arrested and sentenced to four months imprisonment. Whilst at work at the busy bus terminal someone accused Stambuli of taking a passengers bag from a bus. On his seventeenth birthday disaster struck.

Stambuli's greatest fear was to go to prison where his brother had died.

To please not visit and to save her money and strength to grow and sell spinach and to look after Grace, on her second visit, stambuli told her. She must walk the eight miles every day; these visits were distressing for his mother plus as she couldn't afford to take the bus. Abandoned by his friends his Mother visited him every two days. As he started his sentence in the nearby prison he realised how alone he was.

The rest of this storey is told in the next article Stambuli's Storey. Prison life is not easy in East Africa and here in this place Stambuli would reflect and face the future.