Izigo Village: COSAD’s First Partner

Earlier this month, the COSAD team went to Izigo Village located about 25 miles from Bukoba.  Izigo was the first village COSAD partnered with eight years ago.  The people living in Izigo have been described as “vibrant” and “terrific to partner with”.  

The COSAD office team visited Joyce and her husband who are leaders for Izigo’s COSAD projects.  Their home doubles as the “COSAD-Izigo” meeting place when the need arrises.  We visited Joyce’s home to briefly introduce myself and our new office staff, and to give her information about COSAD’s grand openings in October since Izigo will be a big part of it.  While we were in Izigo, Joyce took us to visit Anita Mkiza, one of the women who received a goat through COSAD’s OWOG program in 2009.  Over the past seven years, Anita’s first goat became a mother to four thriving goats under her care (as you can see in the pictures)!  Curious of the details and resilience of the OWOG program, I asked if she had any goats die over the last five years.  She said two baby goats had died.  In my brief time with Anita, I was encouraged and inspired (perhaps even more so after hearing of the past unfortunate deaths) by Anita’s story because I thought it illustrated perfectly the resilience, benefits and sustainability of the OWOG program.  COSAD may be the vehicle that arranges logistics, volunteers, donations, and resources for this program, but the women leaders and recipients in the villages are the ones who make the program a complete success story by their passion and outstanding work ethic! 

Since our visit to Izigo was not purposed for intensive surveying as our trips to Kangabusharo and Kagondo were, I relied on my growing knowledge of Swahili and our team’s on-the-fly translations to gather our information.  Having said that, please leave a little room for slight variations of “hard facts” if you’re keeping score :).

Joyce is in a green shirt on the left; Anita is on the right showing us her goats.

The original goat Anita acquired from COSAD is the brown goat on the far-side of the picture. 

Picture taken outside of Joyce & her husband's (sitting above in the middle) home.