The funeral of Mrs. Lina Mwakyembe

We met Dr. Harrison Mwakyembe a few months ago on the handover ceremony in Isaka.  He is the elected Member of Parliament for the Kyela district and was selected by President Magafuli to become the Minister of Information, Culture and Sports.

Dr. Harrison is a very well know person, not only in Tanzania but in the whole of Africa.  He has an impressive CV. if you want to find out more: http://www.parliament.go.tz/administrations/236

When we first met in Isaka, we had not much time to discuss our project as he had to attend a ship launching at the local shipyard of my friend Songoro.  He made some commitments but to be honest, we were very sceptical as politicians in general like to promise a lot, but do nothing at the end.

But end of May, we got invited in his office in the district building and he took 2 hours to learn in detail about our "Cocoa for Schools" project.  He was very impressed and promised to do whatever was possible to bring us in contact with the ministry of education at top level.  He also spoke of contributing half of a special budget he gets as a minister to our project. He also committed to help us out on a few other small issues as well.  We left the meeting with a very good feeling.  We were quite impressed with his dynamism.

But then there was a big silence for weeks.  Would we be disappointed again?  On Sunday, we heard the news that Dr. Mwakyembe's wife passed away after a battle of 2 years against breast cancer.  She was 47 and left 3 sons.  Now we understood why we did not hear from Dr. Mwakyembe.  It was obvious that he had to be with his family in these last difficult weeks and we felt a bit ashamed that we doubted his intentions.

The least we could do was attend the funeral.  So Felix Mtawa and myself went to the funeral, which took place at the home of Dr. Mwakyembe.  The funeral was attended by a huge amount of people. I was given a place in a tent, just a few rows behind the prime minister.  There were a lot of speeches, but unfortunately Felix was not next to me and therefore I had no translator.  At some point, at the moment we all had to greet the coffin, I heard the ceremony master talking about me and "madrassa" (schools).

The second part of the funeral took place in the garden of the house, where the grave was prepared.  After the rituals, people were called forward and they placed flowers on the grave.  At some point, Felix and I were called forward.  I asked Felix if Biolands had arranged for flowers but that was not the case.  It was overlooked.  But when we came forward, some ladies gave us both flowers, which we could respectfully lay down.

We decided not to stay for lunch.  On our way out a lot of people came the shake hands with us.  Some we knew as we handed over buildings in their villages, other faces were new.  The Member of Parliament of Busokelo told me that all the people were touched by our presence.  He said: you showed now that not only you are building schools for us, you showed that you want to integrate in our community.  That's why to come to greet you.  Wow, that touched me deeply.


Fons Maex