Partner orientation and planning

Once we had finished Progressio Zimbabwe orientation, we moved into Caritas Mutare orientation.

We had 2 days learning about the history and background of Caritas Mutare and why they were set up. We also had the opportunity to go and visit Kentucky farm, which is where the beneficiaries for our project are based. In order to fully understand the project we walked the length of the pipe line, which runs 4km from the borehole to the farm. It was a lovely walk, but it really brought to light the distance that the beneficiaries have to walk each day, each direction just to get to the farm.

Once we had seen and understood the project a bit more we were really keen to get started and we dove straight in to our project planning. We worked through the project plan, identifying the areas where we felt that we could contribute the most, and set ourselves realistic targets that we could meet in the 8 weeks we would have to work on the project. Once we had done this it was down to the nitty gritty planning.

We are lucky enough to be the cycle who are testing out a new qualification for ICS Progressio, the Chartered Management Institute qualification in professional consultancy. The session on the second week was about planning and Gantt charts, and these were so useful that we used them to plan out our activities on a day by day basis for the 8 weeks. There was a lot of discussion, and a lot of multi coloured post-it notes!!It took a lot of hard work, but by the end of week one we had successfully set out a plan for our next 8 weeks and we were ready to get into the practical work in week 2!

Host families

On the Saturday morning it was an emotional farewell to the friends we had made at orientation as we all headed off to host homes for the UK volunteers and back home for the in country volunteers. The next time we would all be together would be at midterm review in 4 weeks.

My host family is the Makupo family, who are a family of 5, Mum, Dad and three children, aged 9, 7 and 2. Dad works for a fencing company and has a farm outside of town, and Mum works for Bakers Inn, one of the take out shops in Mutare. They also have a live in nanny/maid.

Their home is in Chickanga one,  a high density suburb of Mutare, meaning that there are a large number of houses built closely together, which is really good when I am walking home in the evenings as there are lots of houses nearby. The house has three bedrooms (one for the parents, one for the children and one for me), a living room, a kitchen and a bathroom.

The family are really lovely and have made me feel really welcome. We eat dinner together every night as a family. The food is usually Sadza, the staple food in Zimbabwe, which is made by boiling Maize flour and water together until it forms a paste which looks like mashed potato. Sadza doesn’t have much flavour so it is usually paired with a sauce of some kind. It is also served with Kuovo, a green leaf vegetable and some kind of meat. All of this is eaten with the right hand, using the Sadza to pick up the rest of the food.

I also had my first visit to church on my first weekend with my host family. The vast majority of people in Zimbabwe are Christian. My host family are Roman Catholic and so I went to Mass on Sunday. I have only been to Roman Catholic Mass in the UK a couple of times, but this seemed very different – there were African drums and a guitar played by the band. All the parishioners are members of a Guild, for example the Carmelites, and wear their uniforms each week. There is also a lot of audience participation, which is a bit different from the Church of Ireland. It also lasted 2.5 hours, which is I think rather longer than most UK services!

There is also a lot of praying in daily life. Every day at orientation we started and ended with a prayer. At home, there are prayers before eating and even a small service before bed time. On Sunday afternoon I was taken with a couple of other UK volunteers to a surprise 21^st birthday party for a person we did not know! Once the birthday boy had been soaked with muddy water (what else could you ask for at a 21^st birthday party!) the party started with hymns, prayers, a sermon and speeches from various people which lasted almost 90 minutes before the cake was cut, the adults retired inside and left the young people to dance. 

Meeting the volunteers and orientation

Once we had met the partner organisations it was time to return to Harare for some final team leader training and to meet the UK volunteers off the plane.

In between team leader training, debriefing with the team leaders from the previous cycle who were still in country, and doing some research into our respective projects we had a bit of free time. We managed to get to an international Rugby game held at a local school where Zimbabwe comfortably beat Tunisia. It was a fun match and there was a great atmosphere! I decided to spend the Sunday before the volunteers arrived relaxing in the Harare Botanical Gardens. They were more like a national park with lots of trees from all around the world and plenty of grassy spaces, but it was a beautiful place and they even had a tea shop – making it feel very like the national trust!

On the Monday it was all go as we moved out of the hostel we had been staying in for the last 10 days and headed to the airport to collect the volunteers. It was so great that they were arriving, as although I had enjoyed a few days chilling in Harare, the arrival of the volunteers marked the real beginning of our placement.

There is a great viewing platform at Harare airport, so we were able to watch as the crowd of UK volunteers wearing their grey ICS t-shirts snaked through the airport and towards the customs queue. It took quite some time for them all to make their way through customs and collect their baggage, but we had great fun standing in arrivals watching families and friends be reunited – reminded me very much of the movie Love Actually!

Once we had collected the volunteers it was on to another youth hostel for the night before we all headed by bus to Mutare. The journey was a lot more civilised this time round, with private minibuses (and a seat for everyone!). We arrived in Mutare just as the sun was setting and it was a beautiful view as we came up and over the mountain pass to look down across the city as the sun set.

We stayed in Catholic University accommodation on arrival in Mutare, and waiting for us on our arrival were the in country volunteers who we would be working with for the next 10 weeks. It was a great night of introductions and welcomes as we all met and mingled with our in country volunteers and we finally had the full team of 18 in one place.

We spent 4 nights and 3 days living together at the Catholic Center, building our team, learning more about the culture of Zimbabwe and more about the projects we would be working on. It was so nice to have the chance to relax and unwind together and get to know each other in a social setting before we all headed off to our host homes on the Saturday.

Some photos of the Catholic Center and views over Mutare:

 

In the evenings we would almost always hook up some portable speakers to a variety of ipods/mp3 players and have a bit of a dance. We tried to explain to the in country volunteers that dancing while sober is more challenging for people from the UK, but the lack of alcohol was not a problem for the in country volunteers. They had some fantastic moves, and could move their bodies in ways which UK bodies just couldn’t (although we definitely tried)!

So what am I actually doing in Zimbabwe???

Once we had had a few days to acclimatise to Zimbabwe and recover from the long journey, we headed to Mutare, the third largest city in Zimbabwe, where I am going to be based for the next 6 months. We were spending two days there so we could meet our in country counterparts, and to have a first meeting with the partner orientation.

Mutare is situated in a beautiful area, surrounded by mountains. It is more like a large town than a city, and is easily navigable by foot.

 

Sunset over Mutare

 

My co-team leader is Kamo and he is from a town near the border with Botswana, which is at the opposite end of the country from Mutare, but he and his family are all based in Mutare now. He is a recent graduate and has an interest in research and film making, which are skills I definitely don’t have, so hopefully our skills will complement each other.

Once we had settled in and spent the night in Mutare, it was off to visit our partner organisation. I am going to be working with Caritas Zimbabwe-Mutare, who are the relief and aid arm of the Catholic church. There are branches of Caritas in a number of countries worldwide. Our project is a livelihoods project, and we will be working at Kentucky farm, a project which provides 184 families who are earning less than $30 per month a plot of land on which to grow vegetables. The aim of the project is to upskill the beneficiaries so that they are earning $60 per month. Our particular focus will be on training them in marketing skills and in how to set up income savings and loan schemes. We may also assist in delivering some HIV/AIDS sessions.

We were lucky enough to be taken along to visit Kentucky, which is situated on the outskirts of Mutare, 5 km from the nearest suburb. Caritas has set up a pipe system to pump water from 4 km away to the farm to allow for sufficient water to grow crops. It is situated in a beautiful area, with great views of the hills which surround Mutare, and it feels like you have left the city behind when you are out there. It was great to get to walk around the majority of the farm, meet the beneficiaries and start to get a feel for how the farm works and the types of crops grown there.

Here are a few pictures of the farm -

 

 

It is going to be a fantastic project and I cannot wait to get started!

Cross country travel Zimbabwean style!

On Tuesday the UK team leaders got to head up to Mutare to meet our in country counterparts and our partner organisations to find out more about what we will be doing on our placement. More on the placement later, but first we had to get to Mutare from Harare.

Naively I asked Controversy, the in country team leader who was escorting us to Mutare, what time the bus left Harare for Mutare. He told me that if we were there at around 8.30 it would go at about 9. That all sounded fairly reasonable, and so we sort out transportation to the bus station and arrive just after 8.30.

Calling it a bus station is a bit of an overstatement. We pulled up at the side of the road where there was a bus and a couple of smaller vehicles waiting. As soon as we got out of the car we were surrounded by touts, people paid by the bus companies to get people onto their busses. I quickly discovered that there was more than one bus to Mutare - there was the "official" bus and the private vehicles - drivers of smaller vehicles who were seeking paying passengers to go to Mutare. We had been strictly warned by Progressio only to use the official transport, and so we headed for the full size bus. We were ushered on and as we boarded it looked like the bus was almost full, however as we headed towards the back the conductor moved people out of seats, and I soon realised these were people selling snacks and other items who the conductor had allowed on the bus before we left.

We took our seats at just before 9 and I waited for the bus to leave, and waited some more. It transpires that busses in Zimbabwe do not leave until they are completely full. We were lucky on the way out that the bus was full within 15-20 minutes so we didn't have too long to wait. On the way back it was more like a 90 minute wait before the bus left!

The new experiences don't end as the bus leaves Harare. The conductor turns up the music and we are subjected to a loud variety of music, from Christian to dance and everything in between at full volume for 3.5 hours!

The bus made a number of stops along the way to drop off and pick up people and packages. Everytime we stopped the bus would be surrounded by entrepreneurial locals offering up crisps, drinks, fruit and anything else you could think of! Not sure this is going to take off on cross country journeys in the UK but it certainly kept us entertained!