Theresa of Tanzania - A Woman of Courage and Commitment
Before I introduce you to the next “Woman of Courage and Commitment” in this Tapestry blog, we have to turn the clock back almost 20 years.
The time is early summer of 2002. The place is the Graduate School of Public Health, The Center for Minority Health Disparities at the University of Pittsburgh. The setting is my office. A colleague from across the hall, Dr. Edgar Duncan, often comes to my office to talk about projects we’re working on together. That day was different as he brought someone with him. He said “I’d like to introduce you to Theresa Kaijage from Tanzania. She’s here in the Graduate School of Social Work studying for her PhD.” Theresa went on to tell me of the NGO she founded and runs in Tanzania for children and families who have been impacted by the HIV/AIDS epidemic. She told me about the many children who have been left as orphans to be raised by their grandmothers or other members of the family as neither parent had survived this deadly infection. Her plans were that after completing her doctorate in social work, she would return to Tanzania to train others in social work to address this epidemic in her country. From this meeting forward, Theresa would often drop into my office to tell me more about her country and her work there. With my professional interest in international development and my own background in sociology and social work, my dreaming began as to how to find a way to go to Tanzania and set up projects with Theresa in her non-profit/NGO.
One day Theresa came into my office with a very tall young man beside her. She introduced me to her son Karumuna Kaijage who had just graduated from Hobart and Williams Smith. She said that Karumuna was here looking for a job and could I help him to find work in Pittsburgh. This was the beginning of a serendipitous friendship for my family and for Theresa’s family here and in Tanzania. The World Affairs Council of Pittsburgh (WAC) needed to hire an education coordinator for their organization. My husband, Sky Foerster, was the President of this civic organization. Karumuna got on the bus that morning and went to the office for an interview that I had set up. By the end of the day Karumuna had a new job and continued to work for the World Affairs Council for the next several years.
Two years later after our friendship began in 2002, in 2004, Theresa graduated with her PhD in Social Work from the University of Pittsburgh. Frederick Kaijage, her husband and a professor of history at the University of Dar es Salaam, came to her graduation in Pittsburgh. We held a celebration party in our home in honor of Theresa’s momentous and important achievement.
It would take 9 years and a move from Pittsburgh to Colorado Springs for my dream of going to Tanzania to be realized. My husband, now a professor of Political Science at the United States Air Force Academy, and I were able to sponsor a small group of cadets on a service trip to Tanzania in 2011 to work with Theresa in her NGO, WAMATA.
We flew to Zanzibar to work with a WAMATA project. We were introduced to Dr. Diggos, who was working with people living with HIV from the Masaai villages who came to Zanzibar to work in hotels as sex workers.
After our service work with Theresa and her organization in Dar es Salaam, we flew to northern Tanzania to take the cadets on safari in the Serengeti wildlife preserve and the Ngorongoro Crater Preserve.
Once visiting that fascinating and welcoming country for the first time in 2011, I was captivated and captured and just plain hooked on getting back to the country to finally set up projects in partnership with Theresa working with innovative and entrepreneurial Tanzanian women and young people.
In closing, you may be asking where is Theresa Kaijage today, in 2021? Dr. Theresa Kaijage is now Chair of the Social Work Department at the Hubert Kairuki Memorial University in Dar es Salaam. She and her social work faculty are growing this recently established department of Social Work to become a vital and much needed health service provider for the country of Tanzania. Theresa Kaijage and we in InnerCHANGE WORKS, are continuing our work together over these many years by helping to raise the funds to support 25 social work students through a GoFundMe campaign that we’ve launched. To read more about this newest project and to contribute, Click Here
Women like Theresa will forever and always be the measure of what it means to be a leader, a guide and a beacon. Forever grateful, and always looking for ways to support, mirror and further the work that she has spent her life building and delivering.
With gratitude,