It started sometimes before Christmas 2005.  Josephine, one of the many “local brew widows” and mother of five daughters, came to my house at Mulbadaw begging food for herself and for her children.  Her husband, like so many other male victims of hopelessness, spent more time with his fellow drink mates than with the family.  He took the few kilos of maize that was left from last harvest and exchanged it with local brew.  Two of her daughters were sent home to her mother, the three others remaining in her mud hut, roof only half thatched.  The approaching rainy season would certainly not make life easier for the family.

Josephine is one of a few hundred mothers living on or near the Mulbadaw Wheat Farm, bought by Haydom Development Company Ltd on 11^th February 2005.  Some of the families lived with their cows in the area before the land was cleared and planted with wheat thirty years ago.  Many came and settled in search of labour.  Josephine’s husband was one of these.  His resource was his hands; he did not come with cattle.

When the wheat production collapsed late nineties, the very foundation of their lives collapsed.  Thousands of people benefited from the 50 000 tonnes of wheat once rolling out of the area.  Can anyone imagine the dimension of the tragedies that the collapse caused to the families?

Josephine lives a few meters outside the farm.  One day in January 2006, together with my adviser and colleague Bernard Majanga, we met her. She invited us into her house, to witness the conditions she lives under.  Her malnourished children were staying there alone during the day when Josephine was out trying to find something to feed the family with.  The small family had stayed without food for two days this day in January.  There was no door in the house; - the hyena could enter any time at night.

Charity would be possible, but not a solution.  There are hundreds more “Josephines” at our door steps.  We took a trip along the border of the farm and got confirmed what we already knew.

In 2006 we spent time every Tuesday afternoon from January to June with our neighbours; - “we” in this context are employees of Haydom Development Company Ltd and neighbours. We were searching for solution instead of dependence of charity. Together with the leaders of the communities along the border a joint venture was established.  This joint venture was to provide food security for the families that opted for participation.  The families provided much needed hands for the production on the 4000 ha farm (10 000acres). 

Farmers and HDC had a common interest in a good crop on the farm.  HDC Ltd and neighbours became “shareholders”; sharing the yield of wheat. Neighbours that before often were chased away from the farm, as trespassers with or without cattle, became colleagues in farming, - all of us having a common interest in protecting the crop from fire, theft and grazing.

A group of five families contributed labour equivalent to 10 months of work received wheat worth more than the annual salary of an employee. 

The “joint venture” was an exercise in partnership and joint ownership to the crop. 

It was designed to be developed further into “savings and credit societies”; providing micro finance for financing inputs for small enterprises in farming or other income generating activities.

Would it be possible one day also to invest the resources in company shares rather than in cattle causing overgrazing and erosion?

Would some of the neighbours like to invest in company shares instead of in local cattle causing overgrazing and soil erosion; qualify to become elected members of the Board of Directors for Haydom Development Company Ltd?

Unfortunately, the unilateral physical takeover on 12^th August 2006 by the Norwegian   entity “Friends of Haydom”  in collaboration with the Norwegian management of Haydom Lutheran Hospital in Tanzania  caused an abrupt halt to the this development.  This entity is not registered in Tanzania as legal owners of farming enterprises; Haydom Development Company Ltd was established on the initiative of the late Dr Ole Halgrim Evjen Olsen to own and run the Mulbadaw Farm, as the only feasible legal option for the Lutheran Hospital to engage and expand the activities of rural development and commercial food production.

Text and pictures Halvdan Jakobsen. 

A version of the story was also published in Arusha times