Shanga

Just outside Arusha, surrounded by coffee fields and Tanapa conservation land, there is an amazing project called Shanga. Driving into Shanga, you pass vast coffee fields on your left and a mountain of recycled bottles on your right. Past the gate, strands of green, blue and brown beads hang from the trees, mixed with oversized Philodendrons and bright patched of moss. Enormous Yellow Acacia and Benjamina Ficus trees create a canopy over the Shanga workshops. Past the gift shop, the path opens up to a beautiful, rolling lawn dotted with wooden couches covered in overstuffed pillows and low tables. An open-air restaurant sits under a thatched roof on dark, wooden platforms, complete with beaded place mats and pink rose arrangements on every table. The place is so beautiful, so quiet and carries such a positive feeling, the best word I can think to describe it is zen-like. It seems like a whole world away, yet its only 20 minutes outside the stress and exhaust of Arusha.


"Shanga", the KiSwahili word for bead, is a fantastic project working to employ and train local people with disabilities so they have a steady income and opportunity to make a decent living. Artists at Shanga are trained in jewelry and bead crafts, glass melting, sewing, metal wire sculpture, handmade paper, and many other crafts. All the glass at Shanga is made from donated recycled bottles and all the paper crafts are from recycled materials as well. 100% of all proceeds from the gift shop and restaurant go back to Shanga, to employ more and more people in need. Shanga also works in conjunction with 2 other projects to benefit people with disabilities in Moshi and Dar Es Salaam.

A project like this is SO important in Tanzania, where disabled people have next to no civil rights, no accessibility and most people have extremely negative preconceptions of disabilities. It is not an uncommon attitude that disabilities are a result of witchcraft or lack of faith. Literally nothing in Arusha is accessible to anyone in a wheelchair, even the sidewalks are impassable. Seeing elderly people in wheelchairs begging on the street absolutely kills me every time and I wonder when Tanzania will wake up and get people the support they deserve. I look at my sister at home, 17 and thriving with cerebral palsy, cruisin' around in her power chair, going to a fully accessible school, getting physical therapy almost every day and I wonder why can't these people have this??? Accessibility is a RIGHT, not a privilege and it is so discouraging that a place like Arusha, with an enormous tourism economy, cannot seem to find the funding for disability.

I was so taken with Shanga, as I assume most people are, that I am planning on doing a documentary on Accessibility in Tanzania. I would love to interview the artists at Shanga and each of their partner organizations in Moshi & Dar. It will certainly be a challenge to interview individuals that are deaf or mute, especially in KiSwahili, but there are ways to communicate with everyone, and I think it would make an amazingly powerful story that needs to be told.