Daily commute

For me, getting to work involves travelling on the minibuses which take the school children to St Dominic’s, the school where we work. If I am up and at the “bus stop” before 7.15am I have a straight 10-15 minute journey to school. If I go after 7.15 am I miss the school Kombis, and I have to take a Kombi into the town center, and then walk 40 minutes up the hill to the school.

The school Kombis are very entertaining, all Kombis require 4 people to sit to a 3 person bench seats, and play music at full volume as you travel. But school Kombis inevitably try and squeeze as many children into the Kombi as possible, meaning they stand up in the space between seats, sit on knees and otherwise fill every available space! There are also often school projects being carried by very brave children, as there is always the risk that a stray elbow will demolish carefully constructed papier mache!

On any Kombi you travel in, it can be tricky to squeeze your way off the bus at the right time, but luckily there are big windows which you can pass your baby/parcel through to anyone who is passing while you try and negotiate off the bus. One morning last week while I was travelling on the school Kombi a couple of primary school children were squeezed in the back and needed to get off. As everyone was trying to make space for them to get off, the conductor identified a better option, and lifted the two children out the rear window!

The journey home is a little more tricky, as the school Kombis leave at 3.30pm, when school ends, and we don’t finish work until 4.30! So I have to walk 30-40 minutes down the hills, and then get the Kombi. The tricky part of getting the Kombi home is that it drops people wherever they ask, and so the route can be a bit convoluted. It is difficult to know if you are getting in a Kombi which will take me directly home in 10 minutes, or one which will take 20-25 minutes as it tours the town. If I am unlucky the Kombi going home will just have left when I get to the Kombi stop, and so I will have to wait until the next one fills up, which takes anything from 10 minutes to 45!

The novelty hasn’t quite worn off yet, so the Kombi rides still provide me with a lot of entertainment. Once the schools break up for holidays on 6^th August, it may be less fun as I have to walk up the hill every day!

Starting our activities at Kentucky

Having completed our surveys last week, and gotten to know Kentucky farm and the beneficiaries it was time to start our activities. The group was split into two, one team working on market research into both formal and informal markets so they could prepare two reports, and one team preparing and delivering training sessions on internal savings and lending schemes (ISAL).

I was leading the ISAL team, and our plan was deliver 2 training sessions per week for the next two weeks. One of the Caritas staff members delivered a presentation on ISALs during our orientation, which was extremely useful, and so we started work on our presentations.

At Kentucky there are between 185-215 beneficiaries who work the plots, and only a small shed in which we could carry out our training sessions. We therefore split the beneficiaries into 3 groups and ran each training session 3 times in a day, back to back.

The first two sessions on individual self screening and group formation went really well. We had over 100 attendees for our first session, and 75 for the second. In the second session we ran an activity about electing group position holders, such as the leader, treasurer etc, where the beneficiaries had to role play in their groups a good election and a bad election. The role plays were fantastic, there was clapping, singing, dancing, as well as some fantastic acting, including a full faint by one of the participants! We had so much fun with the beneficiaries working through the first two sessions, we cannot wait to return next week and run the next few sessions.

 Team of presenters on day one:

A Baboon listening carefully to the ISAL training!

Training team day 2:

In between delivering activities, as a team leader I still have lots of other responsibilities. These include carrying out team meetings, running our CMI training sessions, meeting with Caritas, discussing the budget and making sure those who are unwell are ok. It certainly keeps us busy!! And next week we have our mid term review, where we report back to Progressio about the achievements we have made and the challenges we have faced, so Friday was spent starting to think about what we would cover in our presentation. 

Milkshakes and Climbing Marymount hill

Unfortunately due to unforeseen circumstances I had to undertake a rather urgent run to Harare to get a visa extension, as my entry visa only lasted 30 days, and my long term visa had not yet been processed. Luckily it wasn’t just me in this position, it was all 3 UK team leaders, so we all could travel together. We made the journey down on the 4.15am bus (painfully early!) and arrived with about 2 hours to spare to get our visas sorted! As we needed to be around to sign any last minute papers we got a night in Harare before heading back to Mutare on Saturday morning. The small advantage to being in Harare was that we stayed at the Small World Hostel we had stayed at on arrival and so we had hot water, wifi and I was able to make myself a bacon sandwich in the morning!

We arrived back in Mutare on Saturday just before lunch, as we had a very speedy bus driver who managed the whole journey in 3 hours!! This gave us enough time to grab lunch and to try out the milkshake place at Meikles restaurant, which was highly recommended by the previous volunteers. They did delicious milkshakes – definitely a good find on a dry programme!

We then headed to the Mutare sports grounds to watch the weekly Rugby match. This week it was Mutare v Harare. Unfortunately for Mutare, the Harare side had 10 national players on their team, and Mutare only had 1, so it was a bit of a one sided match, but it was good craic nonetheless to sit and watch the game in the beautiful sunshine!

On Sunday we decided to be a bit more active and therefore we thought we would attempt one of the smaller hills around Mutare, Marymount hill. Lots of comments were made at the bottom about how easy a hill it looked and how little time it would take to get to the top. One group decided to go straight up, while I joined the other group taking the slightly easier route around the hill.

We quickly discovered that this was not going to be as easy a climb as some had thought as the paths were overgrown with brambles, the hill was steep and the paths were not well defined! However, the views as we climbed the hill were amazing, and as we were so close to the border, we could see over into Mozambique. It was a great relief to reach the top of the hill and to rest on the large stones beneath the cross, even if some of us who were less enamoured with heights found it to be a bit high!

It was a great way to spend a relaxing Sunday afternoon, even if I do still have the scratches all over my arms and legs to prove the challenges we overcame!!

Trucks travelling the road from the border to Mutare:

At the top!

Getting down wasn't quite so easy!

Surveying Kentucky

Our second week of placement was when the real work began. We split the team in two, with Kamo taking 2/3 of the team to do the market research which will be the basis of the market reports we have been asked to produce, and me taking 1/3 of the team to prepare the trainings on ISALs (internal savings and loans).

As we are the first ICS team to work with Caritas and to work at Kentucky, our first step was to prepare some questionnaires to get an understanding of the community. We asked questions relating to personal information, finances, their plots, what they grow, how much they earn and how much they save. It was a really time intensive task, as we were aiming to survey at least 50% of the 216 beneficiaries at Kentucky.

On Tuesday 18 of us headed off in a Kombi for our first day of surveying! We split into pairs and set off to the corners of the farm to interview as many beneficiaries as we could. It was difficult at times as we were often translating from English to Shona and back again, but it was absolutely fantastic to get the chance to actually speak to the farmers and understand a bit about their lives. What amazed me the most were the women who would walk 1.5 hours to get to the farm for 8am, work carrying water, digging beds and picking vegetables until 4pm, walk 1.6 hours home and then prepare dinner for their families when they got back. And they would do this 3-4 times per week, and due to previous issues at Kentucky, they were earning very little from doing so, as it takes 3 months for the crops to grow.

Some of the longer term residents who had previously had good seasons growing their crops talked about how they had spent their earnings. For most it was to support their relatives, for example paying school fees or transport for children to get to school, or covering medical costs. For those who were just starting, they were so pleased to tell us that they had just sold some vegetables for 1 dollar the night before which had allowed them to buy meat or sugar to supplement their daily sadza portion.

Doing the interviews and questionnaires really brought home how important the work that we will be doing is, and how much need there is for this kind of project. This is not the kind of project where we come in and give handouts, we will be helping the beneficiaries to build sustainable livelihoods so they can work to support their families. These skills will last so much longer than any short term gain money could bring.

At the end of the week we had interviewed over 120 beneficiaries, which will hopefully give us lots of useful information on which we can base our training sessions in the next 7 weeks, and for us to measure our impact against. 

The Flea Market, Elephants and Nandos!

As a reward for all our hard work, we spent the weekend exploring more of Mutare including meeting up with the volunteers from Simukai and DOMCCP and visiting the Flea Market, where second hand clothes which have generally been driven in from Mozambique (where they are much cheaper) and sold on stalls in the market. The set-up of the stalls ranged widely from well-presented clothes on hangers or mannequins to unwieldy piles of clothes which looked like they might topple over at any minute. In order to find anything you have to almost dive into the piles of clothes and dig to unearth the gems. You then have to negotiate your price with the seller, which is helped a lot if you have a Zimbabwean friend with you to negotiate in Shona!

Once we had shopped our fill at the flea market, it was off to treat ourselves to Nandos – a well deserved break from Sadza and Kouvo, before hitting up the internet café for some wifi.

Sunday was spent at church and then a group of us headed up to Cecil Kop national park, which is a small national park of around 245 hectares which is home to 2 elephants, a crocodile, a giraffe and a few zebra, and it is only 10 minutes walk from our work place. A few other friends had been there the previous weekend and had only seen the crocodile, but no other animals. We were heading up in the hope of seeing the view, and to our amazement when we climbed the steps to the lake the elephants were down at the edge of the lake! We spent ages just watching them relax by the lake, and then the gamekeeper came out and told us it was feeding time, so he brought the elephants up to the feeding spot, which was right beside the fence. We were able to get right up close and watch the elephants enjoying their dinner. It was a really amazing experience, and it has whetted the appetites of the volunteers to visit a bigger game park, to see what other animals we can find.