“My name is Katarina Balthazar, I am 60 years of age and first born in a family of three, one sister and a brother. I was born in northwest of Tanzania at the shores of Lake Victoria in a district known as Musoma, it is one of the reasons why I like fish as my favorite dish because I have grown up near the biggest lake in Africa and I have been enjoying the great variety of fish from my childhood.
I was taught how to dig by my mother and that’s how we got most of the food to feed our family, I did casual labor jobs like digging in a nearby family’s farm.
Unfortunately, I only worked for a year and I got sick. I used to do a lot of hard work and I never used to feed my self properly, this led to my illness. I was admitted in the hospital for six months, I still used to receive visits from the family I worked for and they always used to bring me my favorite food. The sickness got worse as time went by and I became unconscious for a long time this caused me to become immobile. When I gained consciousness again I asked the doctors to call the family that I worked for to come and pick me from the hospital. One of the doctors told me quietly that the family would no longer need me to work as I was now immobile.
This was when I was taken to the elderly home in Moshi. I have not yet heard from my brother or the family I worked for, I feel they never thought I would survive due to how sick I was, I too feel like surviving that was a miracle. I was brought to the elderly home while I couldn’t walk, I lied on bed for about a year.
At the new home I made new friends and felt I had a new family. I can now walk! And I am enjoying all different activities organised by African Impact and The Happy Africa Foundation and the visits from our loving volunteers.”