In one of Dar es Salaam’s densely populated neighborhoods, community health workers Catherine Mselem and Japhet Mhando are on a vital mission: safeguarding expectant mothers during the pandemic.
Familiar with every corner, they navigate through the streets, preparing to meet the day’s first client. Next to a convenience store sits 26-year-old Aisha Hussein, who is eight months pregnant with her first child. She dutifully covers her face with a homemade mask as the two health workers approach.
She has been terrified...
Sam Vox
On hot Sundays in Dar es Salaam, city dwellers find refuge from the heat at the public beaches. Children bath in the shallow water, youngsters pose for photos in the breeze, and men practice boxing.
In the shade by some tall coral rocks, Sekela Mwaipaja sets up her small art studio. Paintings of women decorate the coral wall; one woman carries firewood on her head, another sets sail in a dhow, a third woman poses in the sunset.
“I paint women...
Lulu Gaitan Kayage is a woman ahead of her time. She is one of the few female boxers in Tanzania and she is fighting for recognition of women in the heavily male-dominated sport.
“In Tanzania, there is the belief that women boxers are not yet a thing,” says 30-year-old Lulu.
But Lulu has been boxing since she was 18 years old, and she won her first international match in South Africa in 2013 when she was 23.
Since then, she has won...
Growing up with her grandparents on the outskirts of Dar es Salaam, Lisa Michael Jones has witnessed the hardships of Tanzanian farmers. She remembers the time in 2016 when her grandfather invested in a large portion of land to start production of watermelons, just to see the harvest fail and return home empty-handed.
“After that loss, I haven’t seen my grandpa cultivate a large piece of land again. Now he just farms at a small plot close to our house,”...
Zanzibar’s teenage girls are often expected to assist with cooking and housekeeping. But 15-year-old Aisha Bakary had a different idea of how to spend her time. As the oldest of nine siblings, she would find spare moments to turn up the volume on the TV or the radio, listening to lounge, house, afro and traditional taarab music.
Nearly 10 years later, 24-year-old Aisha has made music her career. “There are no women DJs here in Zanzibar, so I thought I...