Stories

One of the things I love about Africa is that there is so much that can be done to help improve the lives of so many people.  I love to work and there is no shortage.  Unfortunately, there is a shortage of resources and immigration issues to work through.  To me Africa is a land of unlimited potential, and so are its people.  It is always surprising to me how innovative and ingenious the people are.  They have to be in order to survive.  I’ve never seen inner tube rubber used to fix so many things.  What Africans need is opportunities to work.  Usually that means they need education.  Money alone is not the answer.  That has been proven over the past few decades.  Everyone I talk to just wants a job so that they can look after their families.  In order to facilitate real change, real improvement for Africans, we need to commit to educating them in vocational skills.  This is why I believe that Buwe will be instrumental in making a difference in Doma and hopefully it will impact people out from there.

Buwe will be a vocational training centre for the older orphans at Eden, and for its employees.  People will be taught on the job skills such as brick making, brick laying, foundation forming and pouring, plastering, painting, framing walls, building roofs, thatching, steel roofing installation, plumbing, electrical, gardening and other construction related skills.  We will have a workshop where we will teach woodworking, furniture making, welding, sewing and other craft related skills.  Business and entrepreneurial skills will also be taught in an effort to prepare our teens for the job market.  We have been told by the local government that they will lease us land to set up our workshop and base of operations.

One of my favourite people at Eden is Lameck Guveya.  He was the foreman of the building crew before we arrived so I was introduced to him right away and began working with him.  He has obvious leadership skills and knows how to build, but there is much more to him than that.  Guveya has a deep strength of character and a drive to better himself and his situation.  He is only 29 years old, but has the maturity of someone 10 years older.  When we first arrived he was going to a church sect that encourages polygamy and he was under a lot of pressure to take a second wife or mistress.  He had been spoken to by the leadership at Eden about the dangers of attending this sect and adultery, but was fighting with the pressure.  I began meeting with him, talking with him and sharing my struggles with him and praying together and he stopped attending his church and began going to a church led by one of the Eden men.  His faith is growing steadily and he has a deeply rooted joy and faith that is obvious when you get to speak with him alone.  Guveya often prays all night and fasts for my family and our immigration situation.  He tells his entire church to be fasting and praying as well.  They will often go up the mountain to pray all night, and then he is at work the next day on time.  I received a message from him a month ago saying that he had been fasting for two days and praying for our immigration process.

Guveya isn’t one to talk freely with others because he doesn’t trust Shona people to not gossip, but he opens up to me.  He has ambition, which I encourage, and he wants to open a small shop at Eden near the medical clinic so that he can make more money to support his family and build his mother a better house.  He and I have talked about his business plan and one day he asked me for a loan of $200.  Carole and I decided to give it to him and he paid it back in full on the day he said he would.  He used the money to go to Beitbridge, a town on the border with South Africa, where he bought goods which he brought home and sold for a profit.  I’m hoping that he pushes forward on his plan and I will continue to help him with it.  Guveya and Maria have three children of their own and they also look after three Eden children in their home.  He uses his own money to buy extra food for the kids and grows extra vegetables in his field to give to Eden.  Lameck is the kind of person I want to pour into because he is so humble, doesn’t want a hand out and wants to do everything he can to help others.  I asked him what he was going to do on Christmas day and he said he would be working in his field because his family needs the food and so does Eden.  The photo was taken on Boxing Day just before we left Eden.  I can’t wait to be working with my Shona brother again!

The building crew was building a rondoval at the compound and had gotten to the point where they needed to pour a ring beam for the second floor.  In order to make a form they knocked holes through the wall they had just built to put wire through to hold the wood forms.  When they were done with the ring beam they would have to fix the holes they’d made.  This sort of thing is frustrating to me, because it doesn’t show any foresight to the next few steps and takes more work and time.  I called the crew together and asked them how they could do this part of the job more efficiently.  I explained that efficient means ‘better and faster,’ as some of them didn’t understand the word.  I told them that I had an idea, but I wanted them to come up with some.  This isn’t normal for them, they usually wait to be told how to do everything, but I wanted them to take some time to think it through for themselves and see what they could come up with.

It was a fun process to watch.  They were very hesitant at first, but soon ideas were being tossed out, and usually shot down by the others.  After about 10 minutes of animated talking and sometimes yelling and laughing Langton had an idea, which was to lay the wire in the mortar as they built, rather than makes holes afterwards that would need to be fixed.  It was the simplest, easiest and fastest way to do it, and they came up with the idea themselves.  I suggested they do it that way next time and congratulated Langton on his good idea.  It was great to see the men slapping him on the back and shaking his hand for a job well done.  Langton can’t read or write and his English isn’t very good, but he is one of the smartest men on the crew and is always happy and works very hard.  The men would remember to do it this way the next time because they were the ones who thought of the idea and were going to take ownership of it, rather than just following the murungu’s instructions.  I love those moments!

In Africa they use minivans as taxis which they call ‘combis’ and they drive at reckless speeds and are generally not in good repair.  Accidents are a common occurrence, usually with a few fatalities.  These drivers like to ‘hoot’ their horns when they go past to signal that they are there and are open to pick people up.  There is one that goes past our compound every day at 6am.  Sometimes I think he likes to give his horn an extra long hoot as he goes past.

The smells of Africa are body odor and diesel fuel.  Shona people out where we are don’t use deodorant or antiperspirant so when I’m working with the men it is always very ‘fragrant’.  It’s strange, but it is just one more thing that you get used to and don’t even really care about after a while.  I still choose to use deodorant, but it doesn’t bother me that nobody else does.  Diesel is the primary fuel of choice for vehicles in Africa and it is easier to obtain than petrol.  Our trucks, tractors and generators are all diesel powered so I often get diesel on my hands when I’m fueling up my generator and it takes a good scrubbing to the get smell off.

When I think about the sounds of Africa I think about birds singing early in the morning and the sound of generators.  The birds are fantastic and there is such a variety.  The funniest is the purple crested lourie because it makes a call that sounds like ‘go away’, and thus is nick-named the ‘go away bird.’  The fish eagle is much like the bald eagle in size and appearance, but sounds like a seagull, which sort of takes away from the majesty of this terrific bird.

There is no power supply to our compound so we rely on solar power and diesel generators for our electricity.  Ian’s house has a good solar power system, but he still needs to run his generator for 6 to 8 hours a day, to top up the batteries in the morning after being drained all night, and in the evening to top them up to be used all night.  Our house and the one next to us are solely generator powered, now that our solar equipment was lost in the fire.

We always breathe a sigh of relief when the last generator is turned off and the silence of the night begins.  We hadn’t anticipated the noise of generators and how normal it became.  The locals call our compound ‘generator village’ because of how much we use our generators and the noise they make.  I often need to use a generator to use American power tools, as they use a different voltage than we have in Africa.

There is a group of tiny shops and a bar about a kilometre away and on weekends the bar plays music very loudly into the wee hours of the morning.  We also hear the people walking by on the path or on the road after being at the bar and drinking the local beer, chibuku.  Thankfully our security guard is there to keep them from making too much noise or entering our compound.  The head of security for Eden is a policeman and a good friend of mine and he gets very upset if he hears about any drunk people making a fuss near our houses.

We don’t have much in the way of wildlife in Doma.  Most of the wildlife in the country has been hunted out of existence unfortunately.  Conservation isn’t a priority.  Some nights you could hear hyenas in the distance and there were rumours of a leopard on the kopje, the mountain, but we never saw it.  There are baboons around the mountain, but they don’t come near our compound.

We do have plenty of snakes in the area, but surprisingly you don’t hear of people getting bitten very often.  A seven foot long cobra was killed in our backyard by the gardeners.  I helped Brighton dig a cobra out from under the step of the house next to ours and kill it.  It was 20 feet from our house.  At first we were paranoid about snakes and every stick would make us jump, but after a while you stop worrying about it and just keep your eyes open.  Snakes don’t like to be around humans so the grass is kept cut low around the houses and we just kill any snake that comes around, unless it’s a python because they are protected and are not poisonous.

We have many different birds that I’ve started to photograph and am learning to identify.  One day a pangolin was caught going through the Ervines’ garden so we took it far out to the bush to release it.  The Shona people believe pangolins have gold in their skulls and will kill them.  They are an endangered species in Zimbabwe.  It was a great experience to get to see and hold one.  Lia loves all manner of creatures and it’s a normal occurrence to her come into the house with a frog or a chameleon on her shoulder.  Shona people hate all reptiles, but especially chameleons because of the independent eye movement.  Lia likes to walk up to a group of Shona people with a chameleon on her shoulder and see how long it takes for them to notice.  Lia never tires of seeing grown men jump away with a small screech.

September and October is fire season.  In Zimbabwe it is custom to burn off the land to get it ready for spring planting.  Some people believe that it brings the rain.  In September of 2015 a wildfire swept through the farm and burned down the teen girls’ house and the two chicken barns and a number of the worker’s homes.  A local man had started a fire to scare lions away from his herd of goats but the wind was strong and the fire quickly became a wildfire and spread.

Fire is a real danger at Eden Children’s Village so we cut the grass, which grows to almost 8 feet tall, all around the orphanage and then burn firebreaks to protect the buildings.  We are always on the lookout for fires during this time and if we see smoke someone goes to investigate and everyone who is able goes to help fight the fire if it is coming our way.  In a period of four weeks we will go fight 4 or 5 fires.  All the workmen jump into the trucks or onto tractors and we take matches and go light a fire across a field in front of the approaching fire.  It is hard and can be dangerous work, but it’s necessary to protect our buildings and our neighbours.  I’ve helped fight fires around our neighbours’ farms and it’s great to see the community come together to help one another.

The rains bring out the insect life.  One day we were walking to the farm and as we walked through the grass flying ants flew up by the thousands.  We had no idea what they were or why they hadn’t been there yesterday.  We were told what they were and that the Shona people collect them and eat them and apparently they taste buttery.  I tried one and they were right.  Millipedes the size of hot dogs were everywhere.  Snails crept up the walls of houses, leaving gross trails of goo and poop on the walls.  We felt like we were living through the plagues of Egypt.  It felt like each day introduced a different new bug.  I made screens for our windows, but the doors are always open and the bugs find their ways into the house, so you just get used to living with insects on the walls and flying around the lights.

The rains stop around March and until till they start again in November there won’t be a drop of rain.  Every day is perfectly dry and great working weather.  I never had to plan a job around the weather like I did in Canada.  It’s funny how you can complain about perfect weather, though.  You get to the point when you wish for weather of some sort.  Winter in Zimbabwe was a great break from winter in Canada.  It goes down to around 7 degrees Celsius at night and to mid 20’s in the afternoon.  I wore jeans to work for a month, then back to shorts.  We have a fireplace in the house, but it doesn’t work well because the chimney is so tall and the wind blows the smoke back into the house, but we use it regardless.  It warms up the downstairs, but you don’t feel any benefit upstairs.  Houses are built with wall vents and the windows are not airtight or double pane, so it gets as cold inside as out.  We still found it funny to see people wearing puffy down coats and toques, when we were in sweaters or t-shirts.  One of the builders, Alfred, would wear a bright pink hat with ear flaps tied tight over his head and I couldn’t help but tease him about it.  We did acclimatise though, and would feel cold at 15 degrees.

One of our first purchases was our bed nets, which was good because even when it isn’t ‘bug season’ there are so many bugs flying around.  When the rains hit the insects really come out and we wouldn’t get any sleep without the nets.  We didn’t take any anti-malaria medications for the last 8 months and thankfully the nets worked and none of us got the disease.

It took a while to acclimatise to the weather in Zimbabwe.  When the four of us arrived in 2014 we had just had snow in Canada and then we arrived to the rainy season and temperatures in the high thirties.  It was a real shock to our systems.  We didn’t have bicycles so we walked everywhere.  Sometimes it was so hot that we would jog from tree to tree just to be in the shade for a moment.  Naomi found it especially difficult.  Thankfully there was an inflatable pool at the farm and the girls took advantage of it until it got a hole in it.  It was strange to live in a house with a thatch grass roof, especially during the rains.  We’d lay awake at night listening to the rains pounding on the roof, wondering how long it would be before we’d get dripped on, but it never happened.  The thatch works well to cool off the house and keep it dry inside, although it does start to smell a bit after a couple months of rains.

The thunderstorms in Doma are fantastic.  You can watch the rain coming in a wall across the fields.  It would hit the house and pound on the roof.  If the wind was blowing from the right direction water would pour in from the vents so towels and buckets would have to be spread out on the floor.  The rainy season lasts about 4 months during which time you typically get rain at least every other day, anything from a short drizzle, to a day-long downpour.  During our first term  Zimbabwe had the most rain in almost thirty years, with flooding and bridges washed out and some people drowning.  Our house would often have water and mud across the floor, so we dug a trench across the front to divert the water and put concrete slabs over it for a bridge.  Often Lia and I would sit on the veranda to watch the lightning and rain, and she would run out to play in the downpour.

In the evenings we will usually play a game, watch a tv show recorded on our laptop or just hang out with others in the compound.  I had anticipated watching a lot of movies in the evenings, but we don’t.  We watch a movie once a week, on pizza and movie nights.  We make pizza on Friday night and watch something we bought at the movie shop in Harare for a dollar.  It’s a family tradition that we brought with us, one that has been important to the girls.  On Saturday nights we have our neighbours over and play canasta and chat for a few hours.  On Tuesday evenings we have dinner and a Bible study at the junior Frys’ house and a potluck and worship and prayer time there on Sunday nights.  Lia and Naomi have teen Bible study on Monday and Thursday nights.  It’s funny how busy we can be out in rural Africa.

We go to bed around 9 because of our early start in the morning.  It took quite a while for me to be able to fall asleep when we first arrived in Africa.  Every noise caught my attention and I wondered what it was.  We could hear people on the path and I’d wonder if they were in our compound.  Being married and a father of two girls I would lay awake at night trying not to think about all the terrible violence I’ve read about in Africa.  I would often get out of bed and go downstairs to make sure nobody was there.  We don’t have burglar bars on our windows and the locks don’t really work, so our house is less than secure.  We heard about some break-ins at a local village so we asked about getting a security guard for our compound at night and from then on we’ve had one.  A barbed wire fence and gates have also been installed, so this has helped me have more peace at night.

Some barn owls took up residence under our veranda roof and would take off with a blood-curdling screech and wake us up with our hearts pounding.  They would land on a vent opening above our bedroom and screech, so I eventually climbed up there and put chicken wire up so they couldn’t do that anymore.  They still land on the roof and pull at the thatch, digging around for rats, but at least they don’t screech right above our heads anymore.