HIV/Aids has had a devastating effect on a Zimbabwean village
Scotch Tagwireyi
In Charumbira village in Masvingo province, Zimbabwe, Wednesday is a sacred day. According to custom, it is the chief’s chosen day and no one is allowed to work in the fields or dig unless it is a grave that’s being dug. All women are to remain at home while the men gather under a barren fig tree to discuss matters arising in the village.
However, this custom has changed over the past two years. Now every Wednesday, 200 to 300 widows meet under the fig tree, to learn how to live with the HIV/Aids virus.
The widows, whose husbands began dying of HIV/Aids in the late 1980s, have now come together to form a support group that will help them to cope with the impact of HIV/Aids. The group has been further divided into smaller groups of 30 to 40 women who meet regularly and visit each other to share their experiences or pay visits to the sick. The groups also help children with food and money for school, in families where both parents have died.
Each group chooses three or four people to go for training, and on their return to impart their newly acquired knowledge about HIV/Aids and how to live with it.
Although many women in the village have not been tested for HIV/Aids, most believe they are HIV-positive. Miriro Mukeda (30), whose husband died a few weeks ago, believes she is also infected. “I was still sleeping with Jacob when he fell sick, and unless there is some miracle, there is no doubt that I am infected with Aids as well.”
Another widow, Susan Charumbira (44), who lost her husband 12 years ago, says villagers have been avoiding talking about Aids. The cause of death is left to speculation. “People never wanted to talk about it, but my husband was HIV-positive, and I don’t know how I have lived to this day. I thought I was going to die, and so was my child, who was then only one and half years. It is difficult to believe he is now finishing high school. However, I am getting sickly these days,” she says, touching blisters on her face.
According to Maget Madenga, also a widow, and one of the leaders and founders of the support group, the idea of a support group started in 1994, but could not take off because many widows feared to be associated with Aids and they refused to join. “It was only two years ago, after most of the men had died, that women started facing financial problems in sending children to school and feeding them, that many started turning to support groups.”
Aids has destroyed the economic base of the village and provoked changes in its social fabric. Mupazi Tsveta (76), one of the village elders, has lost four sons to the pandemic and now has to care for their four widows and children.
“The village has eaten itself limb by limb and it is now hanging on the balance,” he says. “Once the women start to die there will be no village to talk about anymore.”
It is difficult to establish how many people have succumbed to the pandemic in Charumbira. Tsveta stretches out his fingers, only to lose count after a few names, and all he can say is, “Pasi radya [the land has swallowed up countless villagers].”
Chief Fortune Charumbira says all men who were between the ages of 20 and 45 in 1990 have now died and most of them have left children and wives.
A survey done by a local secondary school, Mudavanhu, shows that at least 18 students in a class of more than 40 pupils have no fathers. “It was after we saw an increasing number of very bright pupils dropping out of school, missing lessons and losing concentration that we decided to look into the matter,” says deputy principal Reason Tsvakiwa.
Tsvakiwa says HIV/Aids is causing major disruptions in school. Children can no longer afford to pay school fees and as a result the school has resorted to fund-raising to keep its operations running.
“Being a teacher has become more than classroom work. We have to ensure the school has minimum resources to continue operating. Sometimes teachers contribute from their own salaries to help children who come to school on an empty stomach.”
Ruth Banda is one such pupil. Banda, who is now turning 17, has been living with her brother Maxwell (18), who has just completed his O-levels, and her cousin Chipo (nine). Banda’s mother died in 1985 and her father married his late wife’s sister. In 1992 he died and two years later his widow also died, leaving Ruth and Maxwell to look after Chipo.
She is a sad young woman. When one mentions her parents, she weeps uncontrollably. A diary she has kept since 1999 relates her emotions.
“I have no idea how I spend each day, I don’t know where I get the energy to wake up every day and come to school. It must be just God’s will that I continue to live. Life is difficult for me, Maxwell and Chipo. Only, if father did not marry Aunt Grace whom everyone knew was dying of Aids, he would have been alive today.”
Gerald Nyoka (14) lost his father a year ago, and his mother is very ill. Nyoka is always late for school because he has to prepare breakfast for his younger brother and sister, Togarepi (one) and Rumbidzai (nine). He also has to attend to chores.
Charumbira clinic serves a population of about 10 000, and has very little to offer. Sister Agnes Mpofu, the clinic’s only nurse, says villagers seldom come for HIV/Aids test. “It is only when people come asking for gloves and Jik that one can tell that there must be an Aids patient in the family. Many of the infected people are diagnosed where they work and they just come straight home to die.”