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Feature Stories
Zimbabwe: Restoring Childhood
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| Kudakwashe (R) and his brother Brighton are orphans, and live alone together in rural Zimbabwe. |
Nine-year old Kudakwashe Zinyemba has been orphaned by AIDS and lives alone with his eleven-year old brother, Brighton, in a rural village about 40 kilometers outside of Zimbabwe’s capital city. Although their paternal grandmother is alive, she has turned both of the boys out of her home, in a situation that is not uncommon among children like these. Many extended family members do not have the financial or emotional resources to care for these children – and this has caused the number of child-headed households to increase dramatically.
Living alone, Kudakwashe and Brighton are responsible for cooking their meals, washing their clothes, maintaining their small home, and getting themselves to school. It’s a lot of responsibility on the shoulders of such young children.
Add to this the fact that Kudakwashe is HIV-positive and, at one point, was so sick he was out of school for several months.
Seke Rural Home-Based Care (SRHBC) is a Zimbabwean NGO operating in the area where Kudakwashe and Brighton live. SRHBC provides people affected by HIV and AIDS, including orphans and vulnerable children, with psychosocial support, access to medical care and lifesaving drugs, and palliative care. After receiving assistance from the Bantwana Children First project, SRHBC was able to expand significantly its health and psychosocial services for orphans and vulnerable children.
With Bantwana’s help, SRHBC was able to arrange for Kudakwashe to be tested for HIV, and after his test came back positive, made sure he had access to antiretroviral drugs. An SRHBC-trained caregiver who lives in Kudakwashe’s village makes sure he takes his pills on time everyday. The boy is now back in school, thanks to SRHBC, which has also paid for Kudakwashe’s school fees and uniform.
Additionally, SRHBC now runs psychosocial support camps during the school holidays, which gives children a place to receive support and just be children. Both Kudakwashe and Brighton have attended three recent camps, where they played a lot of soccer, attended group therapy sessions, drew and painted, and received accurate information about HIV and how it is spread and treated.
Asked what he liked best about the camp, Brighton said, “Ah, we were just free. We could do lots of things, we were free to talk, and we could just be.”
SRHBC’s ability to provide such comprehensive health and psychosocial care is what has allowed Kudakwashe to return to (and stay) in school.
“Every piece of assistance was necessary to restore some normalcy to his life,” said Veronica Ngwerume-Kanyongo, director of SRHBC. “He needed a diagnosis to receive antiretroviral drugs, he needed a village-based caregiver to help him know when to take his pills, and he needed someone to help him pay his school fees and buy a uniform in order for him to get back to school.
“In some ways, the most important piece was Kudakwashe’s being able to play and interact with other HIV-positive children at the camps, who gave him hope that he has a future and a reason to live.”
The responsibility that AIDS has placed on orphaned children like Kudakwashe is great, but comprehensive assistance from community-based groups is helping to provide real solutions to this complex situation.