A lot of Rubbish - not for mothers!

Zimbabwe is a stunning and beautiful country, but that still doesn't change the fact that the streets are the unofficial bin of Zimbabwe. You can find litter pretty much anywhere in Harare, but it becomes really extreme if you got to Dzivara Sekwa, where the access road has colourful paper and plastic lining the street instead of flowers. The problem is that people are too occupied with their considerable short-term problems and don't have the means to get to official dumping sites, not to forget that the rubbish collectors are at best irregular. And somehow they don't really see the rubbish anymore - even I have gotten used to the sight and don't wince anymore every time. Yet, there are places that are disgraceful and also hazardous with infections spreading like crazy. 

 One of these unofficial dumps is on Dzikwa land and so on Saturday morning a really big clean up campaign was started. 

The whole place was rather gruesome, I only have to mention the two dead dogs we found: one was still relativley well conserved and looking like he would start biting you in a second with his empty eyes, the other one was literally skin and bones and maybe even more scary. Then there was the goat skull I cold-bloodiedly took and packed into a rubbish bag. Also the smell of this decomposing waste, including diapers and rotting cloth, was enough to make me veeery thankful for the mouth cover.  We also got gloves and black plastic bags and rakes and shovels, but the best thing was the Compacter(a

truc, which can press the garbage together). 

So first things first - I came to the dump and received the task to pick up rusty metall pieces: I had a look at my Flip-Flops and pretty much immediately backtracked to the Shelter to get socks and closed trainers. Best decision in my life, however it still didn't stop my feet from looking like this:

Then I was busy picking up metall cans, electronic chips, iron rods and car pieces! and giving them to the people with the wheel barrows or plastic buckets, who transported them to the Compacter, where they were loaded onto the car and crushed. In between, I also helped a bit with picking up less dangerous garbage, such as plastic, paper, cloth and thousands of other things you have to see or you can't imagine them as they are rather undefinable. Then I decided that we were only picking of the top layer of an endless heap, so I got a shovel and started to get to the bottom of things. Luckily I soon received help from a few Seconday boys, who came with more shovels, a rake to loosen and collect more rubbish. So we with the shovels filled a wheel barrow, then Gibson emptied the wheel barrow, while Takudzwa would loosen and pile up the rubbish with a rake. The whole process was accompanied by jokes, exclamations "He's crazy" and a lot of laughter. But after one and a half hours everybody including me was rather tired and thanks God, we then had a break at the Forestry with Sandwiches and Mazoe(mixed with water in a bucket;)
                                        

During our restful break the Compactor was bringing away the first load of rubbish, yet he wasn't back when we were back :( So we all started to prepare with rakes and shovels full wheel barrows and smaller heaps of rubbish on the sides of the road. Then finally after half an hour waiting and a rather impatient Seppo the Compactor finally came and we started to get rid of all the stuff, we had assembled including two tree trunks. Afterwards I had the first time the slightest impression that we had got something done. With the Compactor's help we then managed to at least get the sides of the street cleared. Not that that state of cleanliness even lasted a week.
             


Personally, I found it exhausting, at times disgusting and deeply gratfiying. My hope is that these children at least will not litter on a daily basis anymore and it was good to see, how it isn't completely impossible to clean up the world.

Lion and Cheetah Park

The outing was planned for Tuesday, but then because of a robbery! it couldn't take place, so we all were very lucky, when Seppo suddenly decided on Wednesday that he wanted to go and see the park with us. The park itself is located really near to Harare and only a 20 minute drive from Dzivara Sekwa away. It is mainly meant for driving through with a car and you definitely shouldn't have the windows open, because otherwise you have to close it in panic, when something like this happens. That ostrich was seriously less than a meter away!

So first we went to the part, where the Lions live and as it was a seriously warm day, they were all doing what they do best: lying lazily on warm rocks. The Cheetah's had by that time already been returned to the wild as they can manage very well on their own by eating rabbits and other snacks of that sort. In comparison, a lion is far more dangerous, simply because they are so lazy. At this point they will go to any human settlement and beg for food and if that doesn't work, well the human without any food becomes food.

Here is the King of the Animals.   

                                          An impala

Next we visited a large area, which looked like we imagine the Savannah, filled with peaceful herbivores. The ostrich won't be forgotten that quickly! Then we also saw some monkeys and two different species of antelopes (Impala and Kudu in Shona - equal to the names of the houses on Sports Day). In my opinion the Impala look more delicate, while the Kudu are bigger and probably also used to harsher conditions.

Here is our little Pumba at the water hole, but to be honest wart hogs look far better than Gnus, which means translated "wild beast".

I neither should forget to tell you about the really pretty Zebras we saw - these stripes just look amazing and think about it, the fur has to change its colour in a straight line. How does the hair know that it has to be this colour? And of course my beloved Giraffe, which was just showing us the way, when my camera run out of power ='(

That's why you will have to wait, till you get to see pictures of me and the amazing turtles, we encountered later in the part, where one can actually walk.

The turtle Tommy is apparently around 300 years old and also rather big, especially compared with the little baby turtles we were allowed to hold. They were tiny and soooo cute - I named mine Caroline.

After that we still got to see more lazy lions, including white lions from South Africa, somehow they remind me a lot of teddy bears, don't ask me why. Plus, they are smaller than one thinks, but then one looks at the size of a paw and suddenly the muscles make up the size very easily. We also encountered Jackals, Hyenas and Alligators.

Visit of the Seinäjoki teachers

This weekend some visitors from Finland came. It was five teachers from Seinäjoki Upper Secondary Highschool(by the way that is the school Satu went to): Jana, Katja, Tarja, Tuula and Laura. They are part of Kompi project, which deals with global education and is financed by the Finish Ministry of Education. As Dzivara Sekwa High Two is their partner school and three of the teachers are sponsoring Dzikwa children, we were lucky enough to have them here.

Here they visited DZH2, held a five day long workshop on "Dreams and the Future" for our Upper Secondary and Tertiary Students as well as the Form 5&6 students of DZH2. Plus they also gave a speech for Zimbabwean teachers on a survey done with Zimbabwean and Finnish students (Zimbabweans are far more likely to look at the future as "inspirational" and not as "stressing", whereas we Europeans are extremely frightened of the future and usually are not sure about our future plans). Another topic was the Finnish school system and how it soon will be mostly digitalized!

Bridget and her Treasure Map

Then the workshop for the students began with a game, where everybody was supposed to choose a photograph and afterward explain in a small group, why he or she picked that photo. There were fascinating answers, such as a maize corn that represented the family tradition of farming or a picture of three women from different continents, which someone linked to her enjoying to "associate" with other people including some from different cultures. Hereafter the students had to create a Treasure Map Of Dreams, where they were supposed to put down, what makes them happy (e.g. music or friends ) and their hopes and dreams for the future in a picture form.

This was followed by a chart displaying the strengths and weaknesses as well as the attributes their Ideal Me

would have. I took the liberty to read some of them and they were sometimes amusing and sometimes touching. For instance, a girl described her being quiet as a weakness and I had to remind her that it could also become a strength, if she uses it to her advantage. A funny one was the ideal me to be short-tempered and competitive =D            



                                                      Katja explains the strength and weakness chart

On the third day the students were then invited to first write a Curriculum Vitae and then have a short video clip of 30 seconds to introduce themselves and practice for an interview. Apparently the CVs have seriously improved after the help of the teachers and the videos became very professional very quickly. 

                                                                                                                                                                                                                 Tarja helping with a CV  

After this workshop apparently everybody knew themselves well enough to present themselves quickly and so that they were content after only one try. Actually one girl was so bold that she just decided to present one of her own poems! I believe everybody was really thankful for the help of the Seinäjoki teachers.

On Sunday, a swimming lesson had been planned, but the weather was surprisingly bad and rainy, so as the Germans say "the outing fell into the water". Instead the Culture Club performed for the teachers and to be honest the performance was even better than at the St. John Ambulance. In the end, all the teachers were invited to dance with their sponsor kids or the other children and that was probably one of the most fun experiences in my life, even though I am such a bad dancer. 

An update on the food

There are many specialties I have encountered lately: Matemba, which are small and VERY salty fishes or the fried Madora worms, which are actually not too bad.

Otherwise being a vegetarian has never been so easy as here, since I don't actually want to eat the food, I have seen half an hour ago still alive. For the Zimbabweans the proteins are probably necessary and they can kill, pluck and prepare their food, but since I am not able to do the same, why should I then be allowed to eat it? So for me being vegetarian is relatively simple around here. 

Then yesterday was a special day as Satu is leaving tomorrow :'( so the Finnish volunteers made Macaroni casserole and Nyaradzai made one of the most delicious vegetable curries I have ever tasted. With the food there was Mazoe, the favourite drink of every Zimbabwean, which kind of is similar to Fanta but better.

Oh and here is a rather late picture of me desperately trying to cook Sadza:

Extra Lessons

Extra Lessons is exactly that for what I signed up, when I came here. Because Dzikwa Trust is actually pretty amazing not only for the kids, but also for the students on attachment and the volunteers, since Dzikwa finds for everyone plenty of work usually of that kind, which suits their level of knowledge and their interests. So for example, Simon, the volunteer from Finland who is mainly into environmental topics, especially bird watching, now is part of the Agro-Forestry program and is mainly busy cutting down up to 500 eucalyptus trees or helping with planting the seedlings. The students on attachment for social work are focusing on interviewing the children on their home situation, creating supportive workshops and leading the Sisterhood Club.

Well, Satu and me have taken over the Extra Lessons in English and Maths for Secondary and Primary as well as the Healthcards and some little jobs we can do. This post will be about the Extra Lessons that we have been conducting. I am going to start with Maths as I have done more lessons of that kind in the beginning.

My first try was to improve their skills in multiplication, division and addition in their head, because they are really skilled, when it comes to do any general calculations on paper: Even difficult long-division is usually manageable for them on paper, however even a Sixth Grader has problems to add 37+3 or multiply 9x8. Even if you look at the Secondary Students, I have actually encountered problems with subtracting 360-120, while we were doing some questions on angles.

So in the beginning we were doing some multiplication tables on the board and I was trying to teach them some little tricks, such as 9x8=80-8. That method worked ok, but I felt that I had difficulties to include the slower learning kids or the shy ones, who are hiding behind their more loud and attention-seeking seat neighbours. Try to wait for the last person while you see people fidgeting with their hands and flipping their fingers in front of your face, while you hear "me, me, me". Well, guess what - they are not the only ones who can flip fingers and say "me, me, me" ;)

Otherwise in Maths we have been doing some symmetrical pictures with ice cream sticks or puzzles with the Grade 1 and 2 kids to improve their spatial understanding. Reading the clock will also still be a task that will require a lot of our time. And the absolutely best choice still is to play with dices, where one can do all kinds of calculation games according to age or even play their beloved  Bingo. The only problem with this is that they all surround you and the dices very closely and smaller kids in the back can't see. So at the moment I am trying to teach them to stay seated...

Two other rather successful methods have been leaving the kids to talk in Shona and discuss with each other the solution and to let the kids themselves become teachers and ask questions or throw dices. Something that makes these kids very easy to handle is that they are principally well-behaved in class and easy to reward - chocolate sticks, letting them take over class and especially high-fives evoke great competition. ;P

I neither should forget the two forces of inter-class communication: Telling the answers to your class mates without being asked or discrediting others on their wrong behaviour. At the moment, I am working on explaining them that both are not nice things to do and will neither help their classmates nor change their behaviour. So yes, I am teaching more than only content, especially with the boys and girls in Sixth Grade, who are in a competitive age.

English is the other subject I have been teaching and to be honest I am still developing good ways to teach it, so any advice would be very welcome. ;) 
The first lesson was spent on identifying and spelling little items I had gathered, then someone hid them in a bag and the others had to guess, which items had been taken away. I was very impressed with the good memory these children have (Except I am not sure if I caught all the ones turning around. :D ) Otherwise we have enjoyed reading books and then explaining the content or difficult words in the books to each other. Finally, another good exercise is to create phrases with similar sounding words and then let them act the phrases to work on the comprehension of the words. In addition, as this is called English Communication Class we have been doing some dialogues with the goal to get to know each other.

Very amusing and cute is the fact that the children are immensely disappointed, when they don't get homework. And even though I have created with Nyaradzai's help a timetable for the Extra Lessons usually the kids are begging me to be part of a class they are not assigned to.

The last two days Satu and me joined forces and decided to improve their geographical knowledge as even adults have a problem in locating the USA or have forgotten the existence of Europe. That's why we actually drew a more or less accurate map of the world with chalk onto the parking spot and created some cards with the most important countries and their capitals in the world, such as England, Germany and of course Finland!!! We also had a general quiz, for example on the oceans, continents, the four points of compass and the Antarctica. It was fun for everyone to run around on the map and pass on their own knowledge to the other class members. Let's just hope that all the Zimbabweans who want to live in Finland and Korea now know, where to find these countries :D

Here I am standing on Finland and France.

SISTERS OF LOTION: Ropafadzo and Joyline

The girls at the Shelter have discovered how great LOTION is - as a skin-softener and as a word.The next night we then had BINGO night, which everybody enjoyed so much that I actually also have started to play it in Maths Extra Lesson, where they must for example multiply two numbers of the 7er and 8er row. Here you can see our first three test subjects excited by BINGOOO. (As a price they received tiny tubes of Lotion ;)

          Ropa and Joyline 

Talent, Ropa and Joyline all with several Bingos

Culture Club

Here the week follows a regular time schedule, where from Monday to Friday there are Extra Lessons, on Thursday there is the weekly meeting of most Staff members, where we go through the incidents of last week, update statistics and plan further tasks of the week, and Fridays are reserved for workshops. Finally on Saturday there is the Culture Club and on Sunday everyone (excluding me until now) goes to church.

Now I want to elaborate a bit more the amazing Culture Club they have here in Dzikwa. It offers Traditional Dances, Marimba + other traditional instruments playing(e.g. Mbira) and really good poetry writing and presenting.(It can absolutely not be compared to our stiff poetry.) The Club is lead by Alouise Sagota, the Extra Lesson teacher, and supported by the three dancers and Marimba players: Michek, Samudan and Takawira. 


Then there are also some elder boys, who also belong to our Security Guard Team, who actually won at the Harare International Festival of Arts(HIFA) as the best Marimba playing group this year and accompany our practicing dancers.

Since this group is really impressing, twenty of our Culture Club members were invited to perform at a festival of the St John Ambulance Group. Actually the reason for the event was rather mundane, as it was the donation of four ambulances by the ambassador of Japan! However, the event itself was anything else than mundane: Attending were two Reverends, the Ambassador of Japan and his guests, the Financial Director of the Ministry of Health and finally the Mayor of Harare. The Minister of Health was actually also supposed to come, but he excused himself in the end. So you see how many important people you easily get to know, when you are connected to Seppo(He once met Walter Ulbricht) and Oili and Dzikwa Trust. 

The program itself can be tried to be deciphered on the photo(I am sorry, I can't manage to turn it around). First we all had to get there and to my surprise we only left half an hour late. The bus drive to get there was very enjoyable as our performers were delighting me and the other three Finnish volunteers by singing all kinds of songs.  

When we arrived we started to build up the Marimbas, while waiting for the delegation to come, which was busy marching through the city with the four ambulances and the marching band of the Zimbabwean National Army. Then the ambulances were parked in a small space - rather funny to watch. After that the Dzikwa Marimba Band started to play some expert Marimba, which was followed by many speeches and the national anthems of Japan and Zimbabwe. The latter was accompanied by the marching band of the ZNA and unofficially by the Dzikwa Culture Club. 

The speeches that followed were all very nice and grandiloquent. We heard a lot about "the people of Japan", "the gratitude of all the people of Zimbabwe", the donation as "a great service to humanity", etc.

The only more realistic speech was held by the Mayor of Zimbabwe, who reminded us that Zimbabweans have to work together to improve their economy so the next time they will not need to have ambulances donated, but "will give a service call to the Japanese ambassador to order some ambulances for Buying."

Next, the ambassador of Japan was invited to cut through a ribbon separating the ambulances and the guests, since what would such a festival be without ribbon cutting? Thereafter Father P. Ngwenya of course blessed the vehicles.





Finally, it was the turn of the Dzikwa kids to entertain the audience. Their performance was amazing. I was so impressed and amazed by their talent and by their synchronic dancing. To be honest, I could not with all the time in the world manage to master these dances as they have done(and they are all younger than me) - They have rhythm in their blood. They were performing mainly traditional dances in really amazing costumes and accompanied by our Marimba boys. Later on we also heard some younger girls on the instruments (Ropa and Talent), who I am lucky enough to know as they very often come to the Shelter in the evenings.  



How can I describe the dancing??? It is very energetic, fast and the leg and hip work is incredible. I wished I could add a video, so you could see it properly and hear Marimba music, which somehow always puts me into a good mood. It was also very nice, when Ropafdazo and Michelle did some improvisational dancing and some ladies from St John Ambulance joined the dance floor. Unluckily, some of the more prominent members of the gathering had left by that time and missed all the fun. That however didn't stop us from enjoying the spectacle, even though I stayed safely put behind my camera. ;)

    Ropafadzo, Michelle and a woman of St John Ambulance dancing

In the end, we were all exhausted, but after some nice lunch, which the St John Ambulance was nice enough to provide, we packed together the Marimbas (It is a lot of work to build them together in such a way that they can endure the rhythmic and intense playing of the instrumentalists). The trip back in the bus was spent in an euphoric mood with many more songs. I really would have liked to know, what the people who we passed on the street thought about us ;)