For many years, Marie Harnish of Indianapolis had dreamed of returning to Tanzania, where she had lived as a child, to revisit the place of her childhood memories.
In July, that dream came true when Marie, her husband, Ned Geiser, and their family – Hannah, Nathan and Luke – made the trip of a lifetime.
But it's hard to go home: "I had vague memories," says Marie, "but things are so different now. The trip had a big impact on the kids, though, who had heard many stories – but to actually be there was something else."
One neat twist of fate was being able to stay in her former home, which is now a guest house. Another was coming across a MEDA truck at Serengeti National Park. "We ran out of time to visit MEDA sites, but we were very excited to see a MEDA vehicle while we were waiting to process our paperwork at the gate of the Serengeti."
Pictured below is Fadhili Machela, a MEDA regional manager for the Tanzanian National Voucher Scheme (TNVS), often referred to as Hati Punguzo.
The family also had the opportunity to visit the Olyset Net Factory, where life-saving insecticide-treated mosquito nets are made. They were able to videotape their experience to share with their local MEDA chapter in Indianapolis.
Fadhili Machela, MEDA's regional manager in Mara region for the Tanzania National Voucher Scheme (TNVS), joined MEDA Tanzania in 2005.
TNVS, or Hati Punguzo, as it is known to most Tanzanians, is a malaria-combating program aimed at providing pregnant women and children under five with discount vouchers – hati punguzo.
The vouchers, with a face value of 3,250 Tanzanian shillings, make the life-preserving insecticide-treated bed nets (ITNs), which retail for 5,000 Tshillings, more affordable for this vulnerable group. The subsidization has helped many low-income Tanzanian families to purchase ITNs and use them to protect themselves against mosquitoes and malaria they carry.
As a regional manager, Fadhili's responsibilities include identifying potential ITN retail shop locations, approving retailers and integrating them into the program so they can accept the discount vouchers from pregnant women redeeming them to purchase ITNs.
He collects statistics on the actual target group numbers to determine the number of vouchers that need to be distributed. He also orders voucher books from MEDA Tanzania's main office in Dar es Salaam and distributes them to stakeholders, including the district medical officers’ office and individual health facilities, which issue the vouchers to women during antenatal visits and to the mothers of infants when they receive their measles vaccination.
Fadhili is also responsible for conducting routine monitoring visits to the DMO's office and health facilities, as well as to ITN retailers, to track vouchers and provide weekly and monthly reports to MEDA Tanzania headquarters.
On July 16, during his normal monitoring visit in Serengeti district, he met MEDA members Ned Geiser and Marie Harnish, of Indianapolis, who were amazed to see MEDA in Tanzania and get a first-hand look at how Hati Punguzo operates on the ground.
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