A school for Life in Zimbabwe
9 October 2008
It's
just before 5 am and the sky is still dark when Life Mbedzi is woken from his
corner on a dirty floor. Time to go to school.
Shivering in the predawn chill, he walks for 5 kilometres to Nuli High School
in the far south of Zimbabwe. For the next 12 hours Life will drink only water
as he goes through classes. Without money, there will be no lunch today. But
this eager student is pleased to be there at all.
At the age of 13 Life is no stranger to loss. By the time he was nine he was an orphan,
his mother and father having died from AIDS-related illnesses. Forced to drop
out of school, he was delighted when, a few years later, a programme
funded by DFID gave him the chance to return to education.
Struggling to survive
Life and his siblings live in Beitbridge district, in Matabeleland South, on the border with the more affluent South Africa. And yet here, the home of the minority Venda people, it is a constant struggle to survive.
"There are no rains - and that means no food," say Life. Earlier this year intense heat and dryness left the region's largely drought-resistant sorghum plants completely scorched.
Serious hardship is well known to the people of Beitbridge, but things became even tougher than usual for Life after he lost his parents. "Before my parents died, they were very sick and our family sold everything - livestock and furniture - to buy medicines," he says. "We were left with nothing except a cart and donkey."
Orphans get help
Life is not alone. Across rural Zimbabwe AIDS has robbed many children of their aspirations and rights. Yet many remain hopeful - an optimism on which the four-year, DFID-backed programme is building.
Through its efforts to improve the health, education and safety of the country’s orphans and vulnerable children, the programme is making a difference to hundreds of thousands of individual lives.
For Life himself, this means school fees and stationery are now paid for. In addition, the family has access to the use of a garden and is entitled to free medical check-ups and medicines.
There are hardships still to overcome, but Life sees no reason for giving up.
"Often we have one meal per day – just plain barley - but things are changing
for the better," he says. "For starters, I’m back in school!"
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Facts and stats
- Zimbabwe has 1.3 million orphans, and the number is increasing.
- DFID Zimbabwe has committed £22 million over four years (starting in 2007) to the Programme of Support (PoS) for the National Action Plan for Orphans and Vulnerable Children.
- PoS work includes increasing school enrolment and birth registration, supporting school nutrition programmes and improving access to health services and sanitation.
- Over the past year the PoS has increased the number of orphans it supports from 50,000 to 184,000.
- Over the next three years the PoS, steered by Unicef, DFID and the European Commission and the governments of Sweden, New Zealand, Germany and Australia, expects to reach more than 400,000 Zimbabwean children.
Links
- How we fight poverty: Killer diseases
- Achieving Universal Access - Read more about DFID's AIDS strategy
