Neema Crafts

We went to a dinner with a concert at Neema crafts last Saturday. Neema is a shop and restaurant that is staffed entirely by handicapped workers. There is not a good support system for the handicapped here and they can be shunned by their families and villages. Neema gives them an opportunity to be productive and many now send money back to their families. You can read about their stories in the People link from their website. Those that have visited Iringa have seen the tour and how the staff make paper crafts, weave fabrics, and make other designs to sell. They also have a nice restaurant for lunch and occasionally have an evening event. We met many of the large Finnish contingent here at the party, including Matti Tedre who started the IT project and another IT professor from Finland. Several of them have worked at Tumaini.

The concert was by a native music group from Kilolo but they were not HeHe and the music was quite different than what we hear in Kising'a and was centered around a stringed instrument with a long neck. The other part of the concert was the Neema dance group who are deaf but able to dance together in rhythm. Some of them have hearing aids which help to pick up some sensations but others are totally deaf and say they feel vibrations in their stomach. You can see them dance in this youtube clip: Deaf Dance Group The lead in the clip on the xylophone was playing drums when we watched them and they had coordinated uniforms and had a lot of fun dancing. The food was great too with Chicken Catchetori and a wonderful pear cobbler with pudding for dessert. All this for 9000 tsh (about $7) as a fundraiser.