THE DEVELOPMENT AND THE PROGRESS OF THE TANZANIA MISSION PRO-PROVINCE

Dear Salvatorian confreres wherever you are. Praised be to our Lord Jesus Christ! It is another time for us Salvatorians of the Tanzania Mission Pro-province to let you all know about us. How we live, where we are, what we are doing, our failures and our success as well as our future prospects.

The Tanzania Mission Pro-province consists of four communities. There communities are Namiungo Formation Community, Morogoro Scholasticate Community, Masasi Community and Dar-es-Salaam Community. Both Namiungo community and Masasi community are found in the south of Tanzania. Where as Morogoro Scholasticate Formation Community and Dar-es-Salaam Community are found in the eastern part of Tanzania.

Salvatorians in Tanzania are dealing with a lot of activities. These activities are economic, social and pastoral. Economically we are doing all that we can in order to build up our financial strength. The economic activities that we are doing are agriculture where we grow cashew nuts as the main economic cash crop. Also we grow groundnuts and simsim for cooking oil production. These crops also grown for sale. We also grow food crops like maize, rice and sometimes we are doing a little bit of gardening just for the sake of sustaining the needs of the local community. In addition we keep some cattle for the sake of sustaining the needs of the community. Sometimes these cattle are sold and yield some money that is also used to develop the Pro-province.

Moreover, at Namiungo Community we have a carpentry workshop that serves the needs of almost the whole province. This workshop manufactures most if not all of the furniture needed by our houses within the Pro-province. Furthermore, the workshop also serves the needs of the people who come and order furniture for their home use. Of course they pay for that service. Therefore, this workshop also contributes a certain percentage in the economy of the Pro-province.

When talking about the economy of the Pro-province we do not mean that each and every community engages directly in production. Only Namiungo Community and Masasi Community do this. Namiungo Community is the best among the producers since the community deals a lot with farm work and animal keeping activities. Since Masasi Community consists of the Priests and Brothers working in the parishes in the south of Tanzania, they therefore, carry out their ministries as priests and brothers and also they do some small economic activities. These activities yield them small amount of money that enables them to contribute to the growth of their community. The Morogoro Community is the most dependant community because there is no economic activity there. Therefore, this community is well supported by the Pro-province and external benefactors. The last community, Dar-es-Salaam, is the most urban community. The people who are working in higher institutions and earn a lot of money surround it and hence they contribute a reasonable amount to the Church. To some extent we can say that the growth of this community depends on the contributions of the faithful. In one of the parishes of Dar-es-Salaam Community there has been established a new project of orchard and coconut farm and animal keeping just for the sake of increasing the economy of the community and that of the province. But this project is still in its infancy, so we cannot depend on it for the time being. Generally, the economy of the Pro-province is depending on agricultural products, which depend on nature. This situation of depending on nature leads the economy to fluctuate from year to year and thus we mainly depend on the external benefactors who make our development possible.

Regardless of the difficulties that we are facing, still we are able to render social services in our localities as we ran dispensaries and offer employment to the people around us. These dispensaries offer good health services to the people as compared to the amount of money they pay. And we give employment to the people so that they can improve their living. Generally, the people who surround most of our communities are very poor and they depend a lot on us and thus we have the duty to help them accordingly. We also run nursery schools where we prepare the children before they go for primary education. These are some of the social services we lend to our local people.

Moreover, we are very concerned with our apostolate. In this we are running parishes in three different dioceses: Tunduru Masasi, Morogoro, and Dar-es-Salaam Archdiocese. In Dar-es-Salaam we are building two Churches at Sinza Parish and Mikocheni sub parish. Our great responsibility here is to feed the faithful the spiritual food, which is important for their physical and spiritual growth. In this aspect also we have competent brothers who are teachers by profession. They help a lot in teaching in the primary and secondary schools. They not only teach Scripture, they also teach other subjects according to the curriculum of the government. Actually, we are doing a lot for our apostolate. The above mentioned are some of them. And the aim of doing all these apostolic works is to proclaim and glorify God and his Son Jesus Christ whom he has sent.

Our relation among the members and communities is generally good. We real cooperate well and we all have the same determination of making our Pro-province grow and spread everywhere in the country and if possible even outside the country. We also have good relationship with the Sisters of the Divine Savior (SDS) for we are doing a lot in unifying our Society. We all share our sorrows and our joys for we view them as the other self, and they see us the same way. Also we have good relationships with other Salvatorians in the wider world, as we constantly have visitors coming here and we have some confreres going to other province. As far as our international relation is concerned, we have two brothers studying in the British province so far we thank the British province for offering us such a scholarship to our Pro-province. Therefore, we real intensify our relationships and we really practice our universality with our confreres in other parts of the world.

This relationship is not among ourselves only but even with other religious congregations like Benedictines who are our neighbors in the south, Immaculate Heart Sisters and others. We too share their joys and their sorrows and they do the same to us. Therefore, we thank God for that wonderful bond that we have among ourselves and with our neighbors.

We also thank God for the gift of vocations, because each year people join our society. Actually the number of people joining us is not constant each year, but we thank God because we get them and we plan to improve the ways and the means of getting more vocations.

The future prospects of the Pro-province seem to be hopeful. Because we are sure of getting new members each year we hope to have a good number of priests who will work in the parishes and some will go for further studies. Those who will finish their higher studies may be coming to work in our Salvatorian Institute of Philosophy and Theology or elsewhere depending on the demand for their education. Also more brothers will go for further studies so far till now we have got some brothers who are studying in technical schools and Agricultural Institutes. These brothers can use their education to run our projects so as to improve the production that in turn improves the economy of the Pro-province. Generally, we still struggle a lot to implement the idea of self-reliance for the betterment of our Pro-province and our future.

Prepared by frt. Audifas P. Makala