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.