Traidcraft - March 2021
Furaha’s Story
Furaha (38) who lives in Tanzania, contracted tetanus at just two years old and was unable to walk. She underwent years of physical therapy and, at the age of six, took her first steps. The disease, however, left her spine and leg permanently damaged and she still finds standing and walking painful.
Her parents were unable to fund her education and she left school at 11years old. Her parents divorced and she went to live with her father who discriminated against her in favour of her two sisters who did not have disabilities.
In her early twenties, Furaha fell pregnant by a man who denied he was the father of the baby and she was left alone to bring up her son. To make a living, Furaha started selling fried cassava outside her home making around £1 per day.
through our weekly newsletter, The Rainbow which is a weekly compilation of members’ contributions, generally in the form of articles on techniques, artists, and visits, and photographs of recent paintings and sketches. Several challenges have been set over the period, such as ‘view from a window’, ‘a portrait’, and a ‘five minute challenge’. One of our more fun challenges was to draw a picture of your face in the mirror while not looking at the paper. We had some interesting results!
It has been a very difficult few months. Coronavirus has changed the world as we know it and continues to impact on the ways in which we live and work. 
When you live in poverty, the reality is that you survive by working together. Setting up asso- ciations and farmers’ groups is an integral part of Traidcraft because they understand that people are stronger when they unite.Together, they can demand fair prices, buy and sell collectively and build up savings.
2020 was such a strange year for us all and every one of us was affected in different ways because of the virus and government restrictions.
There is a dwindling number of countries in the world where the UK has influence and does genuine good. The Dept for International Development (DfID) is among one of the world’s most effective aid agencies and has turned the UK into a global force in development. Tanzania is one of the African countries that has benefitted from British Government aid. The independence of the DfID has protected overseas aid from becoming politicised; it was set up after the Pergau Dam scandal in the 1990s when development money for Malaysia was revealed to be linked to weapons sales. But during the summer months, Boris Johnson announced plans to merge the DfID into the Foreign Office, to better align the £15 billion overseas aid budget (0.7% of our GDP) with UK foreign policy. This move was condemned by previous Prime Ministers David Cameron, Gordon Brown and Tony Blair. Boris Johnson said that recipient nations treat the UK like “some giant cashpoint in the sky” (and he threw in the glib comment that their leaders take the money then “cut off the heads of their political opponents.”) This is a worrying, baffling and distressing attitude by the Government. Aid is not a cashpoint in the sky – it is a lifeline that provides medicine, food and shelter, vaccines, mosquito nets and clean water around the globe. Johnson also complained that the UK gives as much aid to Zambia as to the Ukraine, when the latter is crucial to our security. But aid is about giving to those in need.