2008 Visit

Despite significant difficulties, our January/February trip to Zimbabwe to progress the Chivhu project was a great success! Many thanks to members Dianne and Samantha who travelled to Zimbabwe to assist.

Thanks to your generosity, we are now supporting 222 orphans at the four schools in the Zinatsa area. The 222 orphans include all the orphans at Zinatsa, Zhenje and Munyimi primary schools and the orphans from Forms 1 to 4 at Zinatsa Secondary School.

Every orphan received a school uniform, exercise books, ruler, pens and/or pencils and had their Term 1 school fees paid. Due to hyperinflation (over 100,000 % per year), we now pay school fees on a term-by-term basis.

Each orphan (with just 4 or 5 exceptions) received a pair of school shoes. Form 1 secondary school orphans also received maths sets and orphans not previously assisted also received school bags. In addition we provided the secondary girls studying sewing with the piece of material they are required to provide.

Each primary school also received dozens of library books, crayons and a packet of A4 bond paper (the books and the paper being donated by individual members).

Much time was taken in attempting to locate shoes, school bags and stationery. Shoes and school bags were virtually impossible to buy. We finally decided to drive to South Africa (a round trip of 1380 km) to buy shoes and school bags. While there we also picked up a lot of exercise books.

It was in South Africa that we were the recipients of wonderful good fortune. A young store manager's curiosity was aroused by us buying stacks of shoes and school bags and inquired why. When told of the orphans he said that the store had a bit of written off stock (soiled, end of line, damaged packaging etc) and if we could provide him with documentary evidence of our bona fides, he would give it to us. We ended up with 2 huge boxes filled with shoes, socks, underwear, pencils and crayons. We gave the pencils and crayons to the schools and the shoes, socks and underwear were distributed to the orphans.

As we did last year, we took a one-ton truck load of orphans to the Chivhu hospital for treatment. Fortunately, none of them required admission this time. We were able to purchase the medicines they required.

We also assisted in the establishment of a modest project to make school uniforms at the secondary school. We provided sufficient material, zippers etc to make 57 uniform skirts (one for each high school girl). The home economics teacher is to enlist some ex-students to make the skirts. We will pay the project the street market price for the skirts (less the cost of the material). If the things work out, we will extend the arrangement to blouses and boys' uniforms.