Chipangali/The Great Zimbabwe/Dewure

     Saturday morning my alarm clock woke me up 5.10 am. It’s time to go to Chipangali. It took 5 hours to go to Chipangali by car and Seppo drove and Yvonne, Talent and I mostly slept the whole time. Heh! In Zimbabwe police writes a lot of tickets and some even say they have a certain target of how much money they have to get per day. We run to one police that fined us $10 for driving too fast. We were in a hurry so Seppo said -can we go without the receipt- and the police said -yes, but then you have to pay me $50- so we waited for him to write the receipt obviously. Seppo likes classical music and I like it as well so we listened to Beethoven, Mozart, Sibelius and Webber. The reason we left so early was that Seppo had to be on time for Viv’s funeral (he is the founder of Chipangali). When we got there we all went to the funeral because we were instructed by the staff and we didn’t want to talk against because the service had already started. So funeral service for two hours, lucky us. It was touching and the stories that told about Viv were funny. In the end they played a song that Viv liked and said to the crowd to have fun, and I did, because the song was “In the jungle a lion sleeps tonight”. It left the funeral on a happy note which was the idea.

                Animals at Chipangali are rescued one way or another and if possible they are returned to the nature when they are ready. Coolest animals were of course the lions and leopards but also Jackie the jackal was cute because it could be petted by visitors. I also got to pet a wildcat named Prince, who unfortunately liked me so much that it marked me his own THREE TIMES, if you don’t know what I mean by marking, then too bad. After that I went to shower and then we ate with the family who runs Chipangali. I didn’t have time to pet lions because of the shortage in time but when we go back in three weeks they said I could pet lions then and maybe one of the leopards as well. I can’t wait!

                Sunday morning we left 7.30 am to visit the Great Zimbabwe which includes ruins and a museum. The ruins are up high and Seppo lead us with the pace of an army commander and at least I felt exhausted. When finally up we took some photos and Seppo told us about the place. When down we went to see the museum which had explained the time of the ruins and how it was made. There was also a vault which contained, I think, 9 statues of a bird (kalasääski) and one of them is portrayed in the Zimbabwe’s flag. Seppo told that some Zimbabweans consider that place as the most sacred place in Zim. One of the statues is still in Cape Town, but they are trying to get it at Great Zimbabwe as well as the others.

                After that we went to visit Dewure which is a boarding school that we have 33 students in. Talent and Yvonne might go there next year so that’s why they were with us. While Seppo had one on one conversations with the kids, I played with others. They were so nice and it’s sad that I won’t see them more than maybe once after this because they don’t have holidays until the 7^th of December. I think they liked games I knew, and I think I learned new games from them.  

I do not like computers because I find more and more problems of trying to start teaching ABC English & Me program. And I should be ready tomorrow, whhhaa, I am not ready, I don’t even have a puppet (which I am btw gonna call Maria)

 

Laura

Jätehuoltoa

Toimintakeskuksen jätehuoltoa laitetaan järjestykseen. Komposti on vihdoin valmiina ja roskatynnyreitä ollaan asennettu eri paikkoihin ympäri keskusta. Ensimmäisen päivän havaintojen perusteella lapset ovat ymmärtäneet roskatynnyreiden tarkoituksen hyvin ja roskat ovat löytäneet tiensä maasta roskiksiin.

Albert maalaa roskista ja lapsia kiinnostaa.

Solomon ja Albert maalaavat roskisten tukijalat termiittisuojalla.

Kun pihalla maalailtiin roskiksia, sisätiloissa oli käynnissä matematiikan tukiopetus.

-Virva

Kaalia

Binduran yliopiston ympäristöpuolen harjoittelija Solomon tarkastelee Dzikwan toimintakeskuksella kasvattamiaan kaaleja ja hyvältä näyttää tähän mennessä.

Yllätysvierailu

Kourallinen lapsia piteli seurassani sadetta eräänä joulukuun lopun perjantai-iltapäivänä toimintakeskuksella, kun  yhtäkkiä paikalle ajaa auto ja autosta tulee ulos nainen, joka kertoo olevansa Suomesta ja hänellä olisi paketteja eräälle tytölle kummiltaan. Hänellä oli onnea, sillä juuri tämä tyttö sattui olemaan paikalla ja sai omakätisesti vastaanottaa monta pientä pakettia.

Naisen lähdettyä meille tuli tunne, että joulun ihme oli tapahtunut.

-Virva

Helkan ja Heikin läksiäisjuhlat

Tiistaina 18.10. Dzikwan lapset ja henkilökunta kokoontuivat keskukselle jälleen kerran viettämään läksiäisjuhlia. Elokuun lopulla saapuneiden  vapaaehtoisten Helkan ja Heikin aika Zimbabwessa oli tullut päätökseen ja matka kohti Suomea alkamassa. Perinteiseen tapaan heille järjestettiin juhlat.

”Ensin kahvia!”,  ”Blessing, ennenkuin aloitamme työnteon, saisimmeko kahvia?”, näin kuuluivat yleisimmät vuorosanat Alicen  ja Anywayn näytelmässä, jonka he olivat valmistelleet tätä tilaisuutta varten. Ja ilmeisesti kahvin avustuksella Helka ja Heikki saivatkin todella paljon aikaan 2 kuukauden pestinsä aikana. He hoitivat kontissa tulleiden tavaroiden jaon ja pistivät toimintakeskuksen varastot tiptop-kuntoon.

Kuorojen esitysten, Lillyn, Kudzain ja Nomsan runojen sekä lukuisien kiitospuheiden jälkeen koitti lasten odottama herkkuhetki ja taisivat aikuisetkin nauttia pikkuruisten sipsipussien antimista. 

-Size doesn't matter if you just want to sing. 

-Virva

Unicef kylässä.

Lauantai aamupäivä toimintakeskuksella. Sisällä ja ulkona on tohinaa meneillään sillä kylään on tulossa Unicefin Zimbabwen edustaja Dr. Salama perheineen. Lapset valmistautuvat näyttämään parhaat taitonsa perinteisessä tanssissa, marimbansoitossa, kuorolaulussa ja runonlausunnassa.

Hieman ennen juhlien alkamisaikaa pihaan ajaa Unicefin kuorma-auto ja kuorma-auton lavalta löytyy monen monta laatikkoa. Kannamme laatikot katoksen alle, ja niistä paljastuu t-paitoja, leluja, urheilutarvikkeita ja pelejä.

Lasten esitykset hurmaavat yleisön jälleen kerran, erityisesti pienet eka- ja tokaluokkalaiset Lilly ja Kudzai, jotka yhteen ääneen lausuvat koskettavan runon, sekä edustavat mallikkaasti tanssilattialla sekä ryhmässä, että kahdestaan. Lapsille parasta antia taitaa olla kuitenkin uudet t-paidat ja lelut, jotka Unicef heille lahjoitti, niin paljon iloisia riemunkiljahduksia lahjojen jako kirvoittaa.

Unicef representative of Zimbabwe Dr. Salama visited Dzikwa Centre on Saturday with his family. Our children showed their best in traditional dance, marimba and singing. Small girls, Lilly and Kudzai charmed everyone with their poem and dances. Children themselves seemed to enjoy the t-shirts and toys, which Unicef donated to Dzikwa, the most.

-Virva

Winter things.

I arrived back to Harare in the middle of Zimbabwean winter without a ticket back to Finland. First few weeks for me were just getting back on the rhythm of the operational weekly meetings and my own project, but suddenly our hands were full of work. The container from Finland arrived faster than last time just in the middle of all hurries caused by the ending of school term 2. It was just pure balancing with organizing all the paper works and other things needed for the container and collecting the reports. Also power cuts caused us lots of grey hair, as internet was not working either and sending and receiving emails meant that we had to go to town to do that. It slows processes a lot.

On one certain Tuesday morning we headed to Manica Depot to get the container out only to hear that the machine which lifts the container is broken. It was fixed fast, and the container was in front of the Centre just past 1 in the afternoon. There were 60 children helping to unpack it as that container needed to be returned during the same day. So it was offloaded and packed into another container, which was donated to Dzikwa last year, in 2 hours! Very efficient work!

Term 3 started just this week, so the children had a month's holiday. Holiday is not just a holiday all the time as many of the children are having vacation lessons at their schools or they attend extra lessons organized by Dzikwa. The ICT-lessons were going on almost all the holiday month as well. Also the coming Dzikwa Annual Sports Day, which happened last Sunday 4.9., put the children to train during the holidays.

Just before the Sports Day, our Dzikwa crew here in Harare welcomed Seppo with his daughter Saara and grandchildren Aino-Leena and Maarja to Zimbabwe as well as Heikki and Helka, who came to Zimbabwe to volunteer for 2 months. 


-Virva