KISEDET organizes “responsible tourism trips”, to combine the pleasure of traveling whilst having respect for places and people, as well as visiting our projects.
Through this trip, you will be able to know the wonders of Tanzania (parks, Indian ocean, and much more) and visit the projects of KISEDET and other associations where you will be welcomed during your holiday. By staying in these facilities, you will make a significant contribution to the realization of ongoing projects.
Contact us to get your personalized trip at: info@kisedet.org
“I am no bird; and no net ensnares me: I am a free human being with an independent will.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre
Another way to travel: through words
In July 2018, we spent about two weeks in Tanzania, visiting Kisedet’s projects through a trip advised by the Viaggi e Miraggi agency. We are a family with three children: Iacopo aged nine, Marta and Giulia aged fifteen. We started with a strong desire for knowledge and also a bit of apprehension, especially thinking about possible health problems. However, the warm welcome and constant presence of Nino, Giovanna and Julius, Baraka, Daudi accompanied and guided us throughout the journey.
After a short visit to the city of Dar es Saalam, we went to Dodoma where Kisedet operates. We spent a few days in Chigongwe village with the children living at Chigongwe family, a shelter home for street kids. The sunsets, the baobabs, the colors and the open spaces of the African landscape are still in our minds, but certainly the joy, the welcome, the vitality of the children, the ball made of rags, the games played only with the hands left an even deeper mark. The days were spent visiting the village and other nearby villages, schools, the lake, the health dispensary, participating in Giovanna’s yoga classes; we spent the evenings watching the sunsets, playing football and singing songs with the children and young adults of the center.
In Dodoma, we visited the Shukurani shelter home and the drop in center.
Accompanied by Julius (Baba Kiri) and Baraka, we went to Mwanza at Lake Victoria, where we met the children, young adults and operators of the day center for street children, run by the Cheka Sana Tanzania association. The morning was spent participating in the children’s games and activities; in the evening we had the opportunity to follow the Cheka Sana operator in his usual route through the city center, during which he talks with children, trying to befriend them and inviting them to participate in the activities of the center.
It was the first time we had traveled to Africa; we would not have wanted to meet Tanzania in any other way. The landscapes are certainly breathtaking, but we still have in our hearts all the people that Nino and Giovanna’s work and their life dedicated to Africa have allowed us to meet.
A big hug to all of you
Iacopo, Marta, Giulia, Silvia, Simone
July 2018
We went to Tanzania this summer, and it had been a long time since we decided to take a different trip, to discover a world that is so far away from us, and this year we finally succeeded.
With our 11 and 8 year old daughters, we embarked on a new journey. A new experience for all of us, (no one had ever been to Africa before) which had already seemed fascinating and amazing to us on paper.
But when we got there, our expectations and perhaps our imagination were completely crumbled at the face of a reality so intense and so different that it left us breathless.
I am not just talking about the opportunity of coming into a close and intimate relationship with Africans, and Tanzanians in particular, but also about being able to see clearly, as if we were Tanzanians, the places, people and situations that we certainly would have NEVER been able to accomplish with a tour operator or by going alone. All this thanks to Kisedet, especially the employees who helped us and allowed us to completely immerse ourselves in a society and a culture that we perceived as distant.
Most importantly, we had the opportunity to closely see the work that Kisedet (which was created over twenty years ago by Giovanna and Nino) has done, and only through ‘experiencing it firsthand’ were we able to understand its complexity and the difficulties in operating and carrying out such work.
Giovanna and Nino, who still work in the field side by side with local collaborators, who in part have made them grow and trained them, and who, day after day, try to alleviate the sufferings of those children who are abandoned on the street and to try to give them hope for a possible future, and that in over twenty years many of them have been given a future. Or they showed them that a different life is possible.
The humanity that constantly surrounded us every day, has been huge and very intense and we returned home with our suitcases – and perhaps our heads too – a little more empty of things, of objects, and a little fuller of faces, colors, flavors, words.
We will definitely come back and we will also try to offer a little help from our comfortable sofa!
Lavinia & Mauro with Clelia and Frida
In fact, Mauro is the Vice-president of Gruppo Tanzania
RETURN TO TANZANIA, OR THE METHOD OF MADNESS
I returned to Tanzania 7 years after my last (and first) trip there. At that time, I had narrated my journey with the words of “Heart of Darkness” by Joseph Conrad, outlining the two protagonists of KISEDET’s founders – Giovanna and Nino – as two crazy people like Kurtz, the protagonist of that novel. The main difference is that they brought light and not horror to the savannahs and dusty life of Dodoma and its surroundings.
In addition, I want to add another of my favorite masterpiece, that is “HAMLET” and not because it is a tragedy, on the contrary… it is a splendid comedy, which is often tinged with the colors of tragedy, like the stories in our book “FIORI DI STRADA ”which shows us that (by the way, for latecomers and newcomers there are still copies available, contact us on the usual platforms and do it immediately….). Hamlet, as we know, pretends to be crazy to understand what happens at court and someone notices it, so he says: “even if this is crazy, there is a reason to his madness”.
A splendid comedy/tragedy, which by now many there are other actors involved, in addition to the protagonists …. the KISEDET staff has expanded because KISEDET has become bigger, because in the meantime it has acquired various partnerships, including international ones, and also because the growth required a greater number of people – believe me. It is a very difficult task but at the same time it is very rewarding and satisfying, especially when you reach the objectives, but even when you sometimes fail, because no one is perfect. The work is often unpredictable but there are some unforeseen developments, especially if, as Giovanna, Nino and their collaborators do, by helping the children and adolescents become active and aware of their actions — because no one can decide for them to want to change!
The number of children and families that KISEDET has helped over the years has also increased (for the numbers and figures, I kindly advise you to check out our website). If you want to confirm this, try looking at the photos of KISEDET’s 20 years from the inauguration party (1998-2018): in addition to having taken them myself (and this is already an achievement … ahahaha) look at the people and their faces, the scenes of celebration, of the happiness of being together, the old and young , children and adults. I was delighted to participate and document it! I couldn’t show my passion for photography in a better, more exciting and in a more engaging way.
The crazy achievements of Giovanna and Nino were what could have created the party, and the key project of KISEDET, aimed at the recuperation of the street children of Dodoma, at CHIGONGWE … a small and semi-hidden village in the windswept savannah surrounded by aridity of the Tanzanian soil which, however, coincidentally, near the shelter is colored with green and trees, plants, various fruits and even animals (it is the reward of a beautiful goat won by the boys last year in a competition which I do not remember a lot of…): another splendid achievement, I would say.
Some former street children are now parents, although very young. Others are also skilled and competent workers (waiters, cooks, drivers….). One of them, Japhet, “a racing driver”, named his second son Gioven in my honor: sorry if it’s not enough!
In short, I had left him as a teenager at Kisedet (14 years old), even if he was very strong and determined, and I saw him again him as a young adult (20 years old), much stronger, grown up, much stronger and even more determined.
You will agree that there is a reward for this hard work, right?
And since if they are not crazy we do not want them, I hope that some of you, bybreading these few lines, feel encouraged to enter this world or to push harder because, as they say in kiswahili, “Adòss che ‘l muntù è l’é gross “!!!
Asante sana.
Giovanni Iannaccio
Vice-president of the Tanzania Onlus Group
Actually Giovanni is the President