Hunger has stalked Zainab Abu all five years of her life. Her parents can only afford to feed her ugali, a stiff porridge, twice a day. Her health is inevitably suffering.
"Zainab is not happy," says her father, Salehe, his eyes lowered with sorrow. "She frequently has stomach problems. The doctor says it's because of the food she's taking. But there's no choice. Life is difficult but we have to tolerate it."
Zainab has suffered fevers, possibly malaria, in her short life. The family is doing its best to give her a normal upbringing.
The girl smiles as she says, "I'm in class two. I'm five years old."
Her list of "likes" includes rice, TV comedy and playing hide and seek. And: "I like toys I can put on my back."
Asked if she knows what she wants to do when she has grown up, Zainab looks at a worker from Unicef and says: "I want to be like you."
That her parents own mobile phones should not be taken as evidence that they are anything but desperately poor. There are 20 people in the family and none has a job. Tragedy has been a frequent companion in the past five years.
Zainab's parents lost a baby last year. The girl survived only a few hours, not long enough to be given a name. "There was a lot of grief," says Salehe.
That same year, Zainab's mother, Rehema, endured the death of a sister, Monica, from tuberculosis. She was 30.
But the child's grandmother, Mwajabu Juma, lives on. "I think I'm more than 30," she says, eyes twinkling, and the gathering bursts into laughter. "I'm not sure when I was born."
"I hope and believe Zainab will have a good life. I'm not worried about her. But I'm weak, I've got problems with bone pains," she adds.
Talk of the UN, millennium development goals and politics seems remote here. Mwajabu muses in a matter-of-fact way: "My station is so poor, I don't know anything. I don't know the government or donors, I don't go anywhere."
The multigenerational family occupies a maze of crumbling concrete structures in a natural basin, accessed from Dar es Salaam via bumpy roads, lines of shacks and a jumble of tin and wood spaza (convenience) shops.
There is no electricity and a big pile of plastic buckets illustrates how far they must walk for water. Food is cooked on a charred brick stove and the toilet is a hole in the ground. Flies buzz in the heat, hens strut through dirt and dust drifts into eyes and mouths.
Zainab and her brother, Richard, 7, walk 1.3 miles to school every day. Tanzania has made primary schooling free and achieved near 100% enrolment, putting it on course to achieve the millennium development goal for universal education, but critics say quality has been sacrificed for quantity.
"If we had to pay school fees we wouldn't have managed," says their father, who lives off one meal a day. "But it's not a very good education because it's overcrowded and because of the way the teachers teach. We're trying to work hard for a better school. It is our wish that they complete school, poor as we are. I would like both of them to be members of parliament."
Factfile: Tanzania
Under-fives mortality (per 1,000 births): 104
Population on under $2 (£1.28) a day: 96.6%
Debt per capita: $55.48 (£35.45)
Life expectancy: 53
% children in education (F/M): 80.8/84.5
