As we continued our tour, we arrived at the chaplain’s office and were introduced to th
e multiple staff that are responsible for the spiritual counselling and the HIV/AIDS awareness as well as the “homecare” visitation in the villages around Karanda. We heard about the challenges and the victories and opportunities still available. It is a massive challenge that provides a significant opportunity for the Church and for the Mission. Some of these would be seen as we visited the orphan led villages. Before we were to head out to the villages we were shown the “Goat 
Project” by James, the wonderful man who heads this project and has a key role in the homecare visitation. The Goat Project was started to provide high value milk for baby’s whose mothers are unable to produce their own due to HIV or other illness. The project breeds goats that can then be sent home and provide healthy sustenance for the baby. Karanda has a breeding herd to keep the project self sustaining. There are two challenges in the program, the one is training the mothers and family in the care and importance of this milk. The other is the problem that the Shona people have as a cultural to the issue of milking a goat. It is a demeaning task to be seen milking a goat, but it provides such excellent nutrition . . . a real dilemma for this simple project and important solution.
e multiple staff that are responsible for the spiritual counselling and the HIV/AIDS awareness as well as the “homecare” visitation in the villages around Karanda. We heard about the challenges and the victories and opportunities still available. It is a massive challenge that provides a significant opportunity for the Church and for the Mission. Some of these would be seen as we visited the orphan led villages. Before we were to head out to the villages we were shown the “Goat 
Project” by James, the wonderful man who heads this project and has a key role in the homecare visitation. The Goat Project was started to provide high value milk for baby’s whose mothers are unable to produce their own due to HIV or other illness. The project breeds goats that can then be sent home and provide healthy sustenance for the baby. Karanda has a breeding herd to keep the project self sustaining. There are two challenges in the program, the one is training the mothers and family in the care and importance of this milk. The other is the problem that the Shona people have as a cultural to the issue of milking a goat. It is a demeaning task to be seen milking a goat, but it provides such excellent nutrition . . . a real dilemma for this simple project and important solution. ORPHAN LED VILLAGES & THE PREDICAMENT
Of all the tragedies and misfortunes that have inundated Zimbabwe, the plight of the young who have suffered because of the HIV/AIDS crisis and poverty is the most heartbreaking. We have read the statistics for many years now, and have seen the stories and appeals even on TV, but it can’t prepare you for the scale and difficulty it is in real life. The predicament has affected rural culture significantly for a few reasons, including the prevalence of bigotry, and its acceptability in the culture, and the lack of understanding or denial of the reality of the nature of how HIV spreads. The typical cycle starts when the father/husband gets sick and dies of TB or other predatory diseases, as a result of AIDS. The wife or wives may be pregnant and gives birth to a child that the hospital knows is HIV positive, but the wife refuses a test and denies its presence... she does not want the stigma connect to HIV/AIDS that will damage her standing in the community. This is where the counsellors from the chaplains group will often spend a year in awareness counselling and training before there is acknowledgement. Therefore Karanda’s involvement with the problem is significant, yet it is only a small contribution in the scale of the need. Through the “Homecare” program, they are assisting and connected to about 200 orphans, yet this is not in an orphanage. Because these kids are part of a larger family unit and a community network they have tried to maintain the connection within the community culture, and all of these orphans are not just infants that need everything done for them. The predicament is varied and broad. In some instances an infant orphan can be looked after by a relative ... in their community. In some instances the orphans are part of a large family and older siblings can assist looking after the younger siblings.
Shortly after seeing the goat project we joined James and Dorothy C
hirindu (also head of the Homecare program) and headed out to visit some of the villages in a misty rain. The damp weather set a sombre mood for what we were going to experience. At the first village, James explained to us the setting for many of these orphan led villages. These villages technically are defined as “orphan led” if the parents are both deceased, or if the father is deceased and the mother has HIV/AIDS and the kids are needing to “run” the village. Some of these villages still had a mother in them, although she was sick, on Anti Retro Viral drugs (ARV’S) or dying. The first village w
as a case where there had been multiple wives and the father, who has died, infected the wives and subsequently some of the kids were born HIV positive. A 15 year old girl was the oldest and although she was HIV+ (and on ARV’s), she was helping look after family members. In the “kitchen hut”, James recounted their story and the process it takes to convince the wife to be tested and to seek treatment before it is too late. We left them a food pack and moved on to another village. At each successive village James would tell us their story and add other information and stories that demonstrate the challenges, the stigmas and the scale of the problems. He also told us how the Homecare program was also teaching “Farming God’s Way” as a tool towards better self-sufficiency and more effective farming, especially when so many family members were weak or debilitated. Again we left a food pack. We went on to our last village that we would visit, and the saddest situation we saw that day. This village was truly just the orphans and was somewhat more bedraggled than the others. Th
ere was an older (20’ish) brother around, however he was “mentally challenged” and therefore not functioning as an adult. James explained the challenge for the 16 year old girl and how many siblings she was looking after and that some of them were in the field then and therefore not in the village. What broke our hearts next was to find out that they had not eaten in two days. When James asked them what they were going to do, they said that they had planned to go and ask neighbouring villages if they had anything to spare ... even though they knew other villages were in very difficult situations with food also. Again, after a time of prayer for them, we left TWO food packs to help them survive.These three villages were just samplings of the predicament and there were numerous discussions in the van about how we, as TEAM, could increase our role in assisting and even exhorting the church to add volunteers to the monitoring and distribution network already in place. This last day was another significant educational moment towards the purpose of why we were even making this trip. Although this is not the only component of a multi-facetted ministry in the area of HIV/AIDS, it is a very visible and tangible one that cannot be ignored. We recognize that Education, prevention, orphan care and hospice all must be in balance and contribute to beating this scourge on the people... many of them innocent children.
THEY JUST CAN’T WIN
As we returned to Harare, an anomaly on the road reminded us of a heartbreaking story that Dorothy and 
James told us. We were seeing numerous pickup trucks, and larger trucks, transporting cattle towards Harare, with makeshift pole corrals. To the uniformed eye, this would only seem to be rural folks trying to get their cattle to market, but we had been told the “rest of the story”. Opportunistic people were transporting bags of grain from their city sources to the rural areas where they trade it for the cattle. The heartbreaking aspect is that they bring inferior grain and flour, that they trade at terribly unfair exchange, with starving people, for their valuable cattle. If you know the rural Shona culture, cattle are a symbol and deposit of one’s wealth and are used in dowries and many aspects of farming. So to trade away their future to stave off hunger today is a sign of desperate people and for the parasitical business man to feel he has done well in his trading is a sad commentary on the plight of Zimbabwe. It was a difficult, but poignant, image to end our trip on and it will be symbolic of the complexity and the sadness of what is a massive challenge for God’s people.
James told us. We were seeing numerous pickup trucks, and larger trucks, transporting cattle towards Harare, with makeshift pole corrals. To the uniformed eye, this would only seem to be rural folks trying to get their cattle to market, but we had been told the “rest of the story”. Opportunistic people were transporting bags of grain from their city sources to the rural areas where they trade it for the cattle. The heartbreaking aspect is that they bring inferior grain and flour, that they trade at terribly unfair exchange, with starving people, for their valuable cattle. If you know the rural Shona culture, cattle are a symbol and deposit of one’s wealth and are used in dowries and many aspects of farming. So to trade away their future to stave off hunger today is a sign of desperate people and for the parasitical business man to feel he has done well in his trading is a sad commentary on the plight of Zimbabwe. It was a difficult, but poignant, image to end our trip on and it will be symbolic of the complexity and the sadness of what is a massive challenge for God’s people. 
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