Numwa School

Tuesday, 10th March

Today we visited Numwa school. Some students showed us their permaculture garden; they showed it off with such pride, explaining farming techniques and what each and every plant did and how to care for it. I helped them with the weeding and got chatting, their English being pretty immaculate for 12 and 13 year olds (tried getting any English Year 6s to have a fluent conversation in French reecently?). They all had aspirations of being pilots, engineers, lawyers or bank managers, however the sad reality in this rural area of Zimbabwe is that their permaculture lessons would most probably end up preparing them for the lives of subsistence farmers. Maymatzika was also there, a teacher at the school, and humbled us with her dedication to giving these children an education and a decent chance at life with the little resources she had.

They were amazed that I, a foreign mzungu, could speak even a handful Shona words - the local language. They taught me more, including animal names and numbers up to 10. It brought them such delight when I finally got the ten words in the right order unprompted. We chatted about quotidian things and it struck me how common some things in childhood are the world over - your favourite foods, favourite sports and games, favourite lessons at school.

Later on in the afternoon some of the children sang some songs and showed us some traditional dancing in the garden. They got us to join in at the end and it was great fun, though my two left feet now have international status.

In the jeep on the way back we reflected how humbling it had been to hear their career aspirations, dreams which the odds were stacked against them to realise. Yet they were all so happy and grateful to be given the chance to show off their school, one that reminded me in a couple of ways of the Perse; a collection of bikes piled up under a tree, science labs (though these had barely more than a chalk board and a few test tubes by way of equipment) and a large football field.

Education is so highly prized in Zim - some of the kids jog 40km to school and then back again every day barefoot in tattered uniforms, either in blazing heat or the sub-zero Zimbabwean winter mornings, carrying bottles for water to get from the pump at school, the only clean water supply that many of them have. Try getting British kids to do that to get to school in time for the bell.

A Surprise for the Students

Sunday, 8th March

First thing this morning - Sundays being our days off - I decided to do a bit of running along the dam wall. At 9am the sun was already well into the sky and beating down its warmth onto my skin and the added altitude strained my lungs (compared to a sea level Cambridge, Imire is at 1,600m or 4,800 feet). Afterwards I jumped into the dam's little reservoir; unlike the murky waters of the River Cam back home this water was pristine, though surprisingly chilly. Swimming surrounded by the African savannah was an incredible opportunity to get up close to wildlife; only my head was visible above water as I quietly breaststroked along. Fishing eagles soared overhead and swallows darted about just inches from my face. It was complete peace, a meditation almost - that is until Nyasha started chasing me when I got out and refused to give me my towel back. I can tell you, a serval's claws and teeth are a bit more than your average domestic cat's!

After lunch we were told that we had a surprise in store and were driven to Castle Kopjie. Phil (another student whom I got on extremely well with) and I had an explore around while we waited for our surprise to arrive. We found the graves of Norman and Gilly travers, the husband and wife who founded Imire back in 1950; the location was serene in the Miombo woodland and I felt moved standing there, knowing the amazing place that they had created.

Our surprise turned out to be a genet, brought along in a cage having been found in Harare. Imire had offered to take it and give a much better home than the bustling capital. Genets are beautiful creatures with bright, beady bushbaby-like eyes, a mongoose's long, slender body and a long busy tail, though they are more closely related to cats. This one was a large spotted genet - distinguished with a black tipped tail instead of a white tip in the case of small spotted genets - and shot off up the bolders as soon as the cage was opened. It was such a privilege to see the release of a wild animal back into the wild where it would have a long and happy life.

http://www.krugerpark.co.za/africa_large-spotted_genet.html

Just another day in paradise...

Friday, 6th March

Not much to report today - it was just a revision day before our first test - although it was broken up by a mother and son giraffe (you can tell males apart from a bump on their bellies called penile buttons) giving us a display the other side of the dam as we sat and had our lunch outside. The youngster played around his mother and practised galloping - their legs are so long is almost looks like they are doing it in slow motion. It was an incredibly special moment and I felt privileged to be able to witness it during something as mundane as eating a sandwich.