Zimbabwe Relief

Further Info

Watershed staff worked with immigrants and refugees from Zimbabwe. At the time of the workshop, a controversial recount of election results had just been carried out and the Movement for Democratic Change were trying to gain control of the country from Robert Mugabe, who had been in power for many years. The workshop took place over three days at the Pierian Centre and was led by Aikaterini Gegisian, Paddy Uglow and Tom.

Transcript

My name is Martin Mnemo. I’ve lived in Zimbabwe up to 2002 when I came to England. I came in October of 2002.

I’ve had the advantage of going back home on two occasions; I went back in 2004 for my holidays and I went back again in 2007.

Well I was moved really when I went home in 2007 by this thing about orphans and AIDS and HIV and I wanted to visit, like, three projects in Zimbabwe which are dealing with those people, and, well I don’t know how long it will take me but I feel I need to do something positive about that.

I went to this orphanage in Avondale farm which is about 40 kilometres outside Harare; 42 kids under the age of twelve, the youngest being just about three years old, and they said they’d just picked that guy up on the streets of Bulawayo and… quite a sweet little guy really.

I was really impressed by the way they’re looking after them ‘cos they’ve actually built up a dormitory for them with bunk beds, they have three meals a day, they’ve got enough space for them to run around, they’ve got a playing field and they do their own gardening, which is quite impressive.

Socially, spiritually and physically they’re being looked after – I remember the church organisation which runs the ministry, called Compassion Ministries.

I went to a project they’re doing, really supporting children under the age of six at Hopeleigh Farm. These are the victims of the Operation Murambatsvina [“Operation Drive Out Trash”] where a lot of families were resettled in Alivi[?]. Most of the parents, they have no means of earning anything really, so they established sort of a day centre there. Young kids get their breakfast and lunch, and they get to play around on the play fields with everybody else.

That’s quite a massive undertaking at the moment, with about 1000 kids at one point congregating together and just playing around on the fields. On that day we were actually distributing some new shoes to the kids: 250 pairs, with the rest to be done in later days.

And I managed to go to another project that day, running in Epworth. This is a project where they are supporting families who are looking after AIDS orphans, and these are elderly people who can no longer go to work and do anything for themselves.

They get fortnightly supplies to help them to feed the AIDS orphans. Some of them are very young, maybe one year old or whatever, but they’ve lost both parents with the AIDS pandemic.

Things are getting tougher and tougher in Zimbabwe at the moment, ‘cos of economic recession and the political situation which is not working at the moment. It was quite nice to see some of them actually smiling and actually accepting the gifts from the coordinators and everybody who was involved.

Those guys who are running those projects do need a lot of support. A little bit of support from outside, the World, which is trickling in – a lot of the support is coming from church members who are actually running the ministry.

I was thinking in terms of getting them clothes and books and financial assistance – supporting them the best way we can. They’ve actually collected a set of shoes for the orphans - one of the firms that I’ve actually visited is in the process of collecting them, trying to send them back to Zimbabwe.

At the moment, it’s not that difficult to send anything to Zimbabwe.

Credits

All media not otherwise credited created by the story author, or permission obtained, used under copyright licence.

Gardening picture created by Adele Booysen (flickr.com), used under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 licence.

African Children picture created by Soulfull (flickr.com), used under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 licence.

HIV test strips picture created by kimyidionne (flickr.com), used under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 licence.

Freight ships picture created by Corvair Owner (flickr.com), used under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 licence.

Boxes pictures created by Paddy Uglow, used under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 licence.

Shantytown picture created by Fiona Cooper (flickr.com), used under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 licence.