Sunday, May 13, 2007

SPECIAL: Zaramo of Tanzania


We have slightly detoured our top 10 most unreached people groups from the Joshua Project to highlight the Zaramo of Tanzania.

Who are they? The Zaramo of Tanzania are farmers who live mainly in the area surrounding Dar es Salaam in Tanzania. There are about 737,000 Zaramo, all of them surprisingly living in that green blob on the map to the left. There are only about .73% of them professing to be evangelical believers (about 5,380). Their society is an agricultural society; they raise mangoes, cashews, oranges, coconuts and rice, with a few other crops like tobacco and corn. Livestock is also important in the life of the Zaramo and for them, none more important than the chicken. Their society is matrilineal, which means that the family lineage is traced through the mother. Despite the fact that the society is matrilineal, they still practice polygamy.

What do they believe? A few centuries ago the Zaramo were introduced to Islam. Like most African Muslims they practice a mixture of Islam and tribal superstitions. For instance, the Joshua Project says that most Zaramo fear witchcraft and poison and they blame nearly every death on this.

Status of Evangelization/Needs: As mentioned above, only about .73% of all Zaramo are evangelical believers. Several societies have committed to working amongst them, as well as a group of churches. They have the NT in their language, but they do not yet have the Jesus Film or any radio broadcasts in their language.

How can you pray? As always you can learn about the Zaramo at the Joshua Project. But I've summarized that information for you here.

Other places you can visit:

Global Prayer Project

Global 12 Project


Also, visit Faith Comes by Hearing to learn how you could sponsor MP3 bibles in their language, or any other unreached people groups language.


1 comment:

Alan Knox said...

Dougald,

Comments are not enabled on your latest post called "To partner or not to partner..." This has been happening on other blogs too. I think it is caused by blogger's new autosave feature. If you enable comments, I'll comment on that post.

-Alan