‘It was the cow that built your school’: Mama Anna’s grassroots revolution on Mount Meru, Tanzania
Source: Global Voices
High on the slopes of Mount Meru, in Tanzania’s Arumeru District, lies the quiet village of Mulala. With just 2,000 residents, it is easy to miss — but it is here that one woman, known simply as Mama Anna, has reshaped what local development can look like.
Her transformation from subsistence bean farmer to community educator and entrepreneur began with one unexpected gift: a cow.
Mama Anna — Anna Pallangyo — is a Meru woman, a mother of six, and one of 717 women in the FAIDA Small Enterprise Promotion network. With only a primary school education and limited resources, she began by growing beans to support her family. But the returns were modest, and she saved what she could, determined to find another way.
When a development worker brought her a cow, she wasn’t sure what to do. “What can I do with a gombe [cow]?” she asked aloud. Then she learned to milk it.
Each day, she served milk to her family and friends. When the milk began to overflow, she made a decision: “I’ll sell the maziwa (milk).” Every morning, she walked down the long hill to town; every afternoon, she climbed back up, coins chattering in her pockets “like monkeys.”
Full article published here.
High on the slopes of Mount Meru, in Tanzania’s Arumeru District, lies the quiet village of Mulala. With just 2,000 residents, it is easy to miss — but it is here that one woman, known simply as Mama Anna, has reshaped what local development can look like.
Her transformation from subsistence bean farmer to community educator and entrepreneur began with one unexpected gift: a cow.
Mama Anna — Anna Pallangyo — is a Meru woman, a mother of six, and one of 717 women in the FAIDA Small Enterprise Promotion network. With only a primary school education and limited resources, she began by growing beans to support her family. But the returns were modest, and she saved what she could, determined to find another way.
When a development worker brought her a cow, she wasn’t sure what to do. “What can I do with a gombe [cow]?” she asked aloud. Then she learned to milk it.
Each day, she served milk to her family and friends. When the milk began to overflow, she made a decision: “I’ll sell the maziwa (milk).” Every morning, she walked down the long hill to town; every afternoon, she climbed back up, coins chattering in her pockets “like monkeys.”
Full article published here.