Tanzania Fund

Llambambasa Village

The chicken local Partners are MVIWATA, RLDC & TSAEE across 85 villages. The chicken project aims to introduce larger breeding cocks and improve husbandry, nutrition and health standards for chicken, whilst ensuring a route to market for the chickens.

Farmers are organised into producer groups and also encouraged to set up saving and internal lending communities (SILCs). Each village has a community resource person (CRP) who has been trained in poultry management and is responsible for disseminating information to the participating farmers. They are also responsible for vaccinations. Newcastle disease seems to be being well contained after the vaccination programme started. The vaccine is thermo-stable, and is self sustaining in that farmers pay for each vaccination. 3 injections are required for each chicken at a cost of 20 Shillings (1p) each. Fowl pox is more difficult as the vaccine requires refrigeration, but the locals transport it in thermos flasks to keep cool. Fortunately the District Council is now assisting with fowl pox vaccinations.

We visited Elias, a chicken farmer. He has built a hen house, using funds from the SILC, starting with 12 chicks and now has 60. He demonstrated his egg keeping "fridge" for programmed hatching. This gives the farmers a 'model' for when to eat/sell the eggs and when to hatch them to sustain/increase their flocks. The people told us that they would only eat a chicken themselves (as opposed to sell) six times a year. Eggs are being regularly consumed by the families, which provides a good source of protein. Elias himself has seven children & can now pay secondary school fees for the eldest two.

We then went to a newly built chicken collection centre, and met the village committee and the road building committee. The roads (really, earth tracks) are so poor, and tend to get washed away in the rains, that this is severely hampering trade. The road committee (with TASU funding) is therefore repairing the earth roads and building culverts to save the roads from flash floods (the surveying work was carried out by TANROADS, the government's national roads agency). Villagers are paid "cash for work" by Oxfam. The cash is directed to the more needy villagers, with everyone able to work, in roles from road construction to child care. The people seemed very happy with this arrangement. The road will link the village to the main road and this will help as the traders will come to the collection centre to buy chickens collectively rather than from individual farmers.

Next stop was Masanwa to visit a farmer who had built an extraordinary two storey hen house. Tom Childs of Oxfam unveiled a plaque to commemorate the funding of this chicken house. We then sat down with four groups & committee members to discuss the project, getting a very positive & enthusiastic response from the participants. Their chicken collection centre has been given a permit by the district office and they will be selling to traders from it for the first time later in June.