Well today has been difficult. Many moments of tears. The magnitude of need, of dead ends, the taking advantage of the most venerable...the children is overwhelming. The orphaned children are so very needy, lacking one on one attention. They crave physical touch and contact, they literally crawl all over you. You can't really hide when you are the WHITE visitor, one step into view and you are mobbed.
Since there is only one mother in each home and 10-12 children, they are left to manage them selves for much of the time. They do not learn boundaries or expected behaviors, I don't mean expected by our culture, but by responsible Shona adults. An example in a village one would not expect children to chase and injure the animals. But here the orphaned 4 & 5 year old's chase the cows and hit them with sticks and rocks. A behavior that does not get curbed because of the ratio of 110 /8 children to adults. The orphaned kids also are not performing well academically when the reach secondary school. They are trying to identify where to intervene and how. There are so many needs it is not an easy task to fix. At 5 the secondary school students were filing into the church, filling it from front to back. I can not describe the sound of the African voices it is so beautiful. The sing in harmony boys and girls. Today I was sitting in the last row, older boys joined me they had base voices and literaly the bench vibrated with their voices. Before you know they were swaying and claping full of joy!
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