Background

My name is Yuditha Divas Mvanda. I was born in Makete District, in the village of Nkwama. I am married and have three children. I studied up to the fourth form [secondary education], where I performed well and was set to continue to High school. However, while waiting for the results to join a higher-level school, my father passed away. As a result, I couldn't continue my education because there was no one else to support me financially. Given the difficult living conditions at home, I had to leave and find work elsewhere. I went to Mbeya Province to stay with my Cousin brother and worked as a housemaid. I stayed with him for one and a half years, working without pay. My life remained challenging as I couldn't meet my personal needs or help my mother and younger siblings. Consequently, I left and was taken in by a Cousin sister in the family who also employed me as a housemaid in Mbeya. Unfortunately, she mistreated me and not paying me, constantly criticizing and advising me to get married due to our family's financial struggles.
I eventually left and went to stay with a friend who found me a job in Dar es Salaam. I moved from Mbeya to Dar, where I found a job as house maid again. After working for two months, I met my future husband, who decided to marry me. We have been living together since then. After our marriage, we lived in difficult conditions because my husband had a low-paying job as a security guard for people's homes, receiving his salary only at the end of the month. I had to start a small shop-gang business while also giving birth to our children.
Running this business was very challenging. I had to wake up early in the morning to buy goods from wholesale markets, and my children were very young, each a year apart. I didn't have anyone to leave them with when I went shopping, so I often had to close the shop. As a result, the business didn't go well for over three years. We struggled to meet our needs, and even finding a place for the children to sleep was difficult. We slept in a small shack, which people would break into and steal from when I wasn't there. My husband's income was also very low, barely enough to support the family.
We are currently living in a site we guard, which has an old house without electricity. They allowed us to stay there for free in exchange for guarding the place. The site has a large plot of land, so I decided to start farming vegetables there. I sell these vegetables to the surrounding community, as I am used to farming from my village where we grew crops. This is the business I am currently doing, which helps me pay for my children's education and manage our lives, though with great difficulty. Now that the children are growing up and their expenses are increasing, I need capital to expand my business to better support our lives.

Vision

The community surrounding me consists of middle and upper-class individuals, many of whom are retired government officials, retired academics, professors, and university doctors. However, there are a few of us with lower living standards who mainly work as guards for homes whose owners are either abroad or live outside Dar es Salaam. Additionally, there are a few others who have very ordinary jobs. Overall, the majority of our community members are well-off, with cars and nice houses. Electricity and water are available everywhere except in the houses we guard, where we do not have electricity, but we do have water. The surrounding roads are good and paved, except for the neighborhood streets, which have not yet been paved...