HIV training sessions

Once we had finished up our marketing and ISAL sessions, we were able to start working on our focus for the second half of the cycle, HIV/AIDS and gender sessions.

As Caritas, the partner organisation we are working with, is part of the Catholic church we are restricted on the HIV issues we can run sessions on given their stance on the use of condoms. So it was decided that we would focus on HIV nutrition. This topic allowed us to provide training sessions for all the beneficiaries on nutrition while also focussing on the issues that are particular to people living with HIV/AIDS (PLHIV).

This was a really interesting topic for us as the majority of the volunteers had little to no knowledge on HIV/AIDS work, and even less on why nutrition is so important for those living with HIV. Because we had limited time left in our placement we weren’t able to identify groups of people within the farm living with HIV, and so we decided to run the session as a general nutrition session, but with some specific information relevant to caring for people living with HIV or for people living with HIV. It was an interesting session from a cultural exchange perspective as well as we couldn’t just use the food pyramids the UK volunteers were familiar with as they didn’t include traditional Zimbabwean foods. We spoke to the National Aids Council in Zimbabwe and we were able to get access to some specific resources they had on nutrition for people living with HIV in Zimbabwe. It was really interesting as the staple food Sadza obviously has a key role to play, but there were some sources of protein that were less familiar to the UK volunteers such as insects, which we didn’t fancy adding to our Zimbabwean diet!!

The session went down really well with the beneficiaries who were really interested in the general nutrition issues we covered as well as the HIV specific ones. They asked a lot of really insightful questions, most of which we were able to answer from our research and they have asked us to run more similar sessions for them.

It was unfortunate that due to a lack of water availability and the movement of our debrief event forward we were unable to run a second HIV specific session. However, we were able to put together a community event to raise awareness of HIV and to discuss issues including stigma and transmission.

Community sports day

It took us a little bit of time to work out the bureaucracy and clearance processes we needed to go through in order to organise a community event, but we eventually worked it out and scheduled two in for weeks 7 and 9.

Our first community event had the aim of bringing the community together. One of the things we had identified in our initial survey at the start of our placement was that a number of the beneficiaries didn’t know each other and the majority didn’t work together in farming their plots. We hoped that a fun community event would bring everyone together and get them talking.

Our community liaison team worked really hard to plan and organise a community sports day which we were going to hold on a flat bit of ground just outside the boundary of Kentucky farm. Unfortunately before we could run the sports day we had to clear this flat piece of ground. It was a bit of a hard slog for the volunteers but with a great deal of energy and enthusiasm they managed to clear the ground and roughly mark out our race track for the day.

The community liaison team had identified that they wanted to have a cultural exchange as part of the day and so they wanted to have a British picnic. As we were lacking in scones, cream and jam they opted for pasta salad and egg sandwiches. We were aiming to have all 216 beneficiaries attending and so we had to cook enough for everyone. This proved to be slightly challenging when we only had 2 saucepans and 2 hobs! But we eventually managed to get the pasta and the eggs boiled and thousands of sandwiches made.

We ran races for the beneficiaries including sack races, sprint, three legged race and the tug of war. It was great fun, and all the beneficiaries were smiling throughout the day. They even seemed to enjoy our “British picnic”! All in all a very successful day.

ISALS Monitoring and Evaluation

Once we had made it past mid term we knew we only had 5 week left on placement and so everything kicked up another gear!

The ISAL team finished their final ISAL training session which went down really well and the marketing team started on their set of three training sessions. While the marketing guys were planning and delivering their sessions there was still plenty of work the ISAL team needed to do. ICS is meant to promote sustainable development and to that end we have a team plan that we work to, that is part of a broader overall project plan that will cover the work of a number of cycles of volunteers. Within that project plan there are a number of short term, medium term and long term outcomes that our work is supposed to feed into.

This means, that as we did our initial survey on ISALS at the beginning of our training sessions to measure the level of knowledge within the beneficiaries we also have to do monitoring and evaluation throughout the placement to see how much the beneficiaries are benefitting from the work we are doing.

For each individual training session we had to prepare a plan before we ran the session. We ran each session 3 times to reach all our beneficiairies and after each session we would do some informal feedback getting the beneficiaries to give us a thumbs up or thumbs down for how each session had gone. As you might imagine they were very polite and usually gave us thumbs up!

However as we finished our sessions we had to prepare more formal M&E, and so we decided to do another survey of all the beneficiaries to gauge their knowledge. We were quick to point out to our interviewees that this was definitely not a test of their knowledge on ISALS but rather an opportunity for us to determine what further training was needed. We were very pleased to discover that overall the knowledge had definitely gone up among those who had attended the sessions, but there was still plenty for the next cycle to do!

Visit to Vumba

After our mid term review on Thursday we headed into a 5 day weekend, which gave us a great opportunity to get out and about. 

 Friday and Saturday were spent in Mutare, and one of our ICVS kindly took some of us fabric shopping and to her relative who is a tailor. We found lots of amazing material in great patterns and we have ordered lots of skirts, dresses and shirts made, so we may be coming home with a whole new wardrobe! Here is a photoof my first Zimbabwean outfit!

18 of us headed off to Vumba in the Eastern Highlands of Zimbabwe, on Sunday which is about 30km from Mutasa. We spent Sunday relaxing at Leopard rock Hotel, a 4* hotel which has a small game park, horse riding, walks, and lovely grounds. We headed straight off for game viewing and were lucky enough to see zebras, Kudu, antelope, ostriches and monkeys. Unfortunately we didn’t see the giraffes, but the park was absolutely beautiful and we really enjoyed our tour around.

Once we had enjoyed the facilities and seen our fill of the animals we headed to our accommodation for the evening. We were staying in a lodge nestled in the hills, which was beautiful, remote and completely cut off from the outside world – no wifi or mobile signal. I was lucky enough to be up in a cabin on the hill above the main building and had a beautiful view.

We had an amazing dinner, where we had more veggies than we had seen in the previous month, and we all ate until we thought we might burst! Given the remote location we had an amazing view of the stars and the milky way and we spent the evening around the fire outside singing songs and just enjoying the great outdoors.

Monday morning was a lazy affair, allowing us to lie in and relax in the gardens. We decided to do one of the walks offered by the lodge to a waterfall having been told it was only about 30 minutes away. What they forgot to tell us was that it was 4km down hill to reach the waterfall, and the only way back was to climb 4km back up the hill. The waterfall was lovely, but the walk back up the hill was painful and by the time we arrived back at the lodge I was happy just to lie in the sun and read my book for the rest of the afternoon!

We stopped at a lovely view point on the outskirts of Mutare called Prince of Wales view point, where you can see across the border into Mozambique, and where local craftspeople sell stone carvings. A lot of us managed to get our souvenir shopping started!!

Mutasa and Mid term review

Following our first two successful ISAL training sessions and starting the research for our marketing reports, we decided to visit our friends in Mutasa. The DOMCCP team are working about 30km from Mutare in Mutasa at a boarding school called St Matthias. Mutasa is a beautiful area, surrounded by hills and we were made to feel very welcome.

It was great to see our friends and they gave us a tour of the school and where they were all staying. Once we had seen that they took us to their hang out spot, a place with a beautiful view called Edwardes, where a previous resident had built numerous towers, which gave a great view of the surrounding area. Once we had soaked up enough sunshine and beautiful views it was off to the Headmasters house for a Brai (or barbecue). A particular highlight was the little puppy who lived there, who was very adorable! It was so lovely to hang out, eat great food and have a bit of a boogie through the afternoon.

Once we were back from Mutasa it was straight back into a busy week running up to mid-term review. We managed to squeeze in two more ISAL sessions at Kentucky, and finalise our marketing reports all in the three days before mid-term review. We also spent some time working on our mid-term report and our presentation.

We arrived at St Josephs, where we had our orientation, on Wednesday evening, ready for 2 nights of catching up and having fun. Thursday morning was a really uplifting morning as each team presented their achievements for the first half of the placement and the challenges we had faced. We had plenty of achievements to talk about, our ISAL sessions, our marketing reports and our plans for the rest of the placement. We also had plenty of challenges to talk about due to us being the first ICS team working with Caritas, but we hope that we have managed to identify the best ways to deal with the challenges we are facing.

Daily commute

For me, getting to work involves travelling on the minibuses which take the school children to St Dominic’s, the school where we work. If I am up and at the “bus stop” before 7.15am I have a straight 10-15 minute journey to school. If I go after 7.15 am I miss the school Kombis, and I have to take a Kombi into the town center, and then walk 40 minutes up the hill to the school.

The school Kombis are very entertaining, all Kombis require 4 people to sit to a 3 person bench seats, and play music at full volume as you travel. But school Kombis inevitably try and squeeze as many children into the Kombi as possible, meaning they stand up in the space between seats, sit on knees and otherwise fill every available space! There are also often school projects being carried by very brave children, as there is always the risk that a stray elbow will demolish carefully constructed papier mache!

On any Kombi you travel in, it can be tricky to squeeze your way off the bus at the right time, but luckily there are big windows which you can pass your baby/parcel through to anyone who is passing while you try and negotiate off the bus. One morning last week while I was travelling on the school Kombi a couple of primary school children were squeezed in the back and needed to get off. As everyone was trying to make space for them to get off, the conductor identified a better option, and lifted the two children out the rear window!

The journey home is a little more tricky, as the school Kombis leave at 3.30pm, when school ends, and we don’t finish work until 4.30! So I have to walk 30-40 minutes down the hills, and then get the Kombi. The tricky part of getting the Kombi home is that it drops people wherever they ask, and so the route can be a bit convoluted. It is difficult to know if you are getting in a Kombi which will take me directly home in 10 minutes, or one which will take 20-25 minutes as it tours the town. If I am unlucky the Kombi going home will just have left when I get to the Kombi stop, and so I will have to wait until the next one fills up, which takes anything from 10 minutes to 45!

The novelty hasn’t quite worn off yet, so the Kombi rides still provide me with a lot of entertainment. Once the schools break up for holidays on 6^th August, it may be less fun as I have to walk up the hill every day!

Starting our activities at Kentucky

Having completed our surveys last week, and gotten to know Kentucky farm and the beneficiaries it was time to start our activities. The group was split into two, one team working on market research into both formal and informal markets so they could prepare two reports, and one team preparing and delivering training sessions on internal savings and lending schemes (ISAL).

I was leading the ISAL team, and our plan was deliver 2 training sessions per week for the next two weeks. One of the Caritas staff members delivered a presentation on ISALs during our orientation, which was extremely useful, and so we started work on our presentations.

At Kentucky there are between 185-215 beneficiaries who work the plots, and only a small shed in which we could carry out our training sessions. We therefore split the beneficiaries into 3 groups and ran each training session 3 times in a day, back to back.

The first two sessions on individual self screening and group formation went really well. We had over 100 attendees for our first session, and 75 for the second. In the second session we ran an activity about electing group position holders, such as the leader, treasurer etc, where the beneficiaries had to role play in their groups a good election and a bad election. The role plays were fantastic, there was clapping, singing, dancing, as well as some fantastic acting, including a full faint by one of the participants! We had so much fun with the beneficiaries working through the first two sessions, we cannot wait to return next week and run the next few sessions.

 Team of presenters on day one:

A Baboon listening carefully to the ISAL training!

Training team day 2:

In between delivering activities, as a team leader I still have lots of other responsibilities. These include carrying out team meetings, running our CMI training sessions, meeting with Caritas, discussing the budget and making sure those who are unwell are ok. It certainly keeps us busy!! And next week we have our mid term review, where we report back to Progressio about the achievements we have made and the challenges we have faced, so Friday was spent starting to think about what we would cover in our presentation.