Shay’s Report – Zimbabwe November 2008
Claire and I went out on Tuesday 25thAugust to visit a community in Mutoko. Aided by a Baptist Priest ,Victor, we were able to seamlessly get through the police blocks. 170 km West of Harare there is an area that borders onto Mozambique and was once a rich area with tourists and travellers and their foreign currency passing through. It is now a desolate area that was one of the worst hit areas during the recent militia attacks after the elections in March. Combined with its high rate of AIDS and poverty it is truly a place in need of desperate help.
We turned off the road and drove a further 4km down a dirt road and arrived at the local Baptist Church where we met the Pastor's wife Constance and his two lovely sons. We were invited into their home where Victor translated who we were and why we were here. Constance explained that the area has been hounded by journalists in the last few months as they try track down the tortured victims of the election backlash. A sense of anxiety and nervousness settles over the valley after months of ruthless militia moving from village to village burning houses, raping women and cutting off limbs of any man who looks able to cause trouble. I heard a story about a man, Tapiwa whose house was burned and his wife and daughter raped, and he was beaten to an inch of his life. He stumbled over to a nearby tree and took up a piece of bloody wire that the rebels has used to beat him a few hours before – he threw it over a tree, tied a knot, stood on an empty drum. Pushing his head through the bloody, slippery metal hole Tapiwa was ready to end his suffering when he heard his 6 year old little girl shouting ‘Babe, upe wean manji?’ (Daddy, where are you?) over and over again. He took off the noose, jumped out and decided he had to fight the persecutions of Zimbabwe for a better future for his children. Tapiwa now works very closely with various officials, going out into rural areas and counselling people and helping reach out to those most affected.
Constance and her sons explain we may receive some reticence from people at first, but they will come with us and explain we are not here to interview or interrogate them but rather to find out how they are and what suffering we could possibly try alleviate. The first house we visited was a lady in her mid 20’s who husband died 6 months ago. She has two children; one is a 10-month-old baby who lies asleep on the concrete floor undisturbed by the flies that sit around her eyes and the corner of her mouth. The other child, a little girl, aged 3, sits with a plate of green porridge-like substance in a plate. I ask Victor to ask the mother what her child is eating, she says it is maize seed (the seed is not for human consumption) but it is all they have and they will die if they plant it and wait for the crop. The lady’s brother is visiting as she is now 7 months pregnant and does not have much energy left to take care of her children. Victor pulls me aside and explains that the husband almost certainly died of aids and the both the mother and child will be HIV positive and then these two little girls will be orphans. He hopes the brother will take them but from what the brother said he can barely provide for his own 3 children as it is. The woman doesn’t smile at us once and looks uncomfortable with our presence and my flashing camera in her hut. I don’t think she is angry or even scared, but has merely lost all hope and has an all too clear idea about the future ahead of her.
The next hut is a lady in her early 30’s who has lost a father, a brother and a husband in the last year. She invites us into her home and offers us a piece of floor to sit on. Her 70-year-old mother and daughter come and join us. We talk about how they live off mangos from a tree they are lucky to have, how they have maybe one meal a day and how you ‘get used to feeling hungry’ after a while.
We then all pile back into the car and drive a further 12km on the dirt road to visit an orphanage of 60 children, most of who are orphans or live in families headed by children. Unfortunately we get there too late and the children are all out in the fields or back to the village. Esnut is the lady who is the ‘Leader’ of these children greets us with big open hugs, she has warm and kind eyes and is so thin I can’t imagine her picking up infants without breaking bones. I ask her if she likes looking after children and she says she loves helping the children and feels that she is mother of 60...she laughs at her own joke and we laugh with her, Claire says she looks very good after having 60 children. We all laugh together and briefly forget the awfulness of the situation.
On the way back we discussed with Victor that we need to distribute under the cover of the church, but we would like to reach the whole village not just the church members. Claire together with some other vehicles will then head out on the day and will personally distribute the food packs to names we would have gathered on a list. If the road block is a worry we may need to stagger the distribution.
