(09.10.2008). The idea of a trip to Tanzania came up during the »Kirchentag« 2007 in Cologne while baking »Mandazi« together with the member of the German parliament, Kerstin Griese, at the cooking stand of the United Evangelical Mission.

It was agreed to travel to Tanzania together in order to visit projects of the UEM member churches. In the beginning of October a delegation of seven persons accompanied by Angelika Veddeler, head of the UEM programme International Diaconal Service, and Brunhild von Local, editor at the UEM, visited the North-Eastern Diocese and the Eastern and Coastal Diocese of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Tanzania (ELCT).

The programme included visits to social-diaconal projects like the Sebastian Kolowa University College (SeKUCo) in Magamba in the Usambara Mountains, which had opened in the previous year. With this college the Lutheran Tumaini University is the first in the country to have a faculty for special-education teacher training. Ulrike Luedtke, professor for special education at the University of Rostock, who was part of the UEM delegation, will now teach special-education at the college for two months. Also travelling along was Andreas Dittmann, professor at the Institute for Geography of the Justus Liebig University of Gießen. He came along to expand the partnership between SeKUCo and the faculty of Gießen and to prepare the new course of studies »Ecotourism and Nature Conservation«, which will be offered in the following year.

During the one-week trip the delegation also visited the »Irente Rainbow School« for children with special needs. The member of parliament Griese said she was especially touched by the discussion she had with a young girl, Hawa, in the Rainbow School. The small Hawa had told her how much she enjoyed going to school and Ms. Griese could really see her eyes shine. At the end she had sung a song and told her about her friends she has in school. That had really been a moving moment for Ms. Griese.

The UEM delegation also saw the Christian-Muslim dialog programme of the Eastern and Coastal Diocese of the ELCT on the island of Zanzibar. There, the first intercontinental south-south co-worker of the UEM, Reverent Suko Tiyarno from East Java and a Norwegian colleague are trying to bring together Muslim and Christian women through a sewing project. On the island of Zanzibar, 98  percent of the population are Muslims and 2 percent are Christians.