Ignas Diu, is a telecommunication expert educated in Nairobi, Kenya. He holds several post graduate courses from Denmark, Japan and France, and for more than 20 years he has been employed in the Tanzanian Telecommunication Company. Ignas’ family has its roots in Singida in the central Tanzania. It takes a day on a dangerous bus on unimaginable pothole roads to reach Singida from Dar es Salaam, the capital city in Tanzania. Early in Ignas’ life, his father became a Trade Unionist and his mother a Midwife Assitant. Before Ignas was 7, the family moved to Tanga City on the coast of Tanzania. The town is a very tropical place with close cultural ties to Zanzibar. Boats ferry on the dangerous waters of the Indian Ocean to maintain the bonds between friends and families in the two places. Tanga area also borders the low mountains of Usambara with its beautiful vegetation and cool weather.

In Tanga, Ignas got his school education: primary, secondary and high school. Still one must wonder how he developed the interest in telecommunications so many years ago, since only recently has telecommunications become a commodity for many in Tanzania. With a smile, Ignas tells how that interest came to him: In Tanga, there was one public telephone booth, and little Ignas used to go there to make prank calls to self imagined numbers. One day he got a man on the phone who threatened to come and get him then and there. Ignas then imagined that the man could actually see him and would come for him, so he ran as fast as he could all the way back to his home.

After that incident he got very interested in the intricate workings of telephones, and he got so good at it, that after high school he got a scholarship to go to Nairobi to study. Now, some thirty years after his interest was awakened Ignas is a part of the team that is developing the new Membership Management System (MMS) for WBFN. The old system requires a lot of input and has over time been developed in different clusters. The scope of the new system, which Ignas is helping another WBFN-member, Besma Huc, develop, is, in short, that it will be a uniform system making it easier to handle data, process membership and involve members, and, as a result, facilitate the work for all who are involved in the process of integrating a new member in the Family Network. It is a job of great importance and requires specific skills. In joining the team, Ignas found a platform to develop his own skills in a slightly new direction, preparing him for that job in an IT-firm that he would like to gain.

Ignas lives in Alexandria, Virginia with his wife and three children. His oldest child, Neema, at 18 is already involved in teen programs at the WBFN and the two young ones, Natasha at 6 and Alain at 2, charm everybody in the WBFN office with their smiles and wit when visiting. His fourth child, a son of 14 named Allute, is still in Tanzania completing his studies but will join the family here next year.

Recently, Ignas has become the much needed and most welcome new Male Spouse Coordinator. He stresses, though, that he welcomes everyone to a chat regardless of gender, race or nationality. So if you are male, a newcomer or an old timer, Ignas is always ready for a chat and advice on living and working in the DC area. Right now, rumors have it that he is trying to get a soccer team together and that he hopes there will be a ladies team as well.

Annemarie Brink Olsen