“Just Like Me”

On a fresh winter morning in Caledonia, home to thousands of displaced families, Martha leads a group of three- to six-year old children in a noisy learning game. Normally shy around adults, her energetic and affectionate manner is a joy to watch, and the kids respond with shining eyes and eager voices.

To Martha, creating a carefree atmosphere, where kids can be just kids, is a very important aspect of her work. She knows from experience the enormous life challenges they will grow up to face – the insecurity of families devastated by HIV/AIDS and socio-economic chaos. ‘I really love children,’ says Martha. ‘Some of them are just like me when I was young, growing up orphaned.’

Martha was born in 1981. Her father’s early death meant no money for school fees, so she had to abandon her studies before her sixteenth birthday. The outlook seemed to improve when Martha married. Her husband had a workshop and a thriving business in the poor but relatively comfortable Glen View district of Harare. They had two children, a girl and a boy. But in May 2005, the Murambatsvina campaign was launched. Ostensibly to ‘clean up’ the densely packed suburbs, the campaign was actually to punish the people of these communities for voting ‘the wrong way’.

‘Everything we had was burned to the ground,’ says Martha. They had to move to Caledonia (an ex -cattle ranch where many of the 700,000 people displaced by the campaign resettled in 2005). ‘We barely survived through my selling wood. So I started selling fish, travelling long distances every day to buy it and then bring it back to this community to sell door to door.’

In 2008 Martha’s life changed when she met up with Cecilia Masekereya of the Shingirirai Trust. Cecilia was keen to establish an Early Child Learning Development (ECLD) program in the Caledonia community, to teach and care for orphans and vulnerable children aged three to six years. Martha and her husband found a suitable venue for the program. It wasn’t long before Martha felt drawn to working with Cecilia and the children.

All of the women involved in the work of Shingirirai have to go through comprehensive training to acquire the skills needed to run the programs and be effective leaders in their community. Martha describes the range of new skills she now practices: ‘I have learned how to create a supportive atmosphere for the children and I know a lot about child development now. I can identify and reach children who have been abused, and I have learned special skills to help slow learners.’ Martha has learned so much, but something nobody else could teach her is her deep empathy for the kids she is helping – she has been where they are now.

Adults in the community also benefit from Martha’s training: she offers practical advice and skills to caregivers who are looking after several orphans, and sensitively guides women in ‘living positively’, (accepting and disclosing their HIV-positive status).

Like all the Shingirirai Trust women, Martha shows great pride and commitment to her work, and to becoming a ‘changemaker’ for other communities one day;

‘I would really love for this program to prosper and continue because it gives me education and work that is very helpful and productive for children. The training we receive through Shingirirai enables all of us who work in the programs to give the orphans and vulnerable children the love their parents are no longer here to give…and there are so many children here and in other places who need that love.’

We invite you to join forces with Martha and the Shingirirai Women as they work to regenerate their community in the face of enormous daily challenges. Your support of €10 each month for a year, a single payment of €120, or whatever amount you feel able to donate, will help Martha to continue teaching the younger children in the Caledonia settlement for another year.

Thank You.

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