Turning Point in My Life

"At times our own light goes out and is rekindled by a spark from another person. Each of us has cause to think with deep gratitude of those who have lighted the flame within us." Albert Schweitzer

Whatever life holds for us, we are indebted.For life, for enjoyment, for happiness, peace, for well being.For everything that we have, are and are going to be. It is a privilege to be alive.To be able to live and enjoy and give.From the time of birth, we are in debt to a million influences.To our miraculous physical creation – a million chemical reactions, transformations and creative forces.To the people who fed us from the bottle, changed our diapers, cuddled us and gave us the physical touch that we needed, clothed us when we couldn't have done so ourselves …We could have perished otherwise….Clean water.Fresh air,Warm clothes and cuddly blankets.Clean hygienic surroundings.Roof over our heads. Those who have touched and supported us mentally emotionally when we did not know any better.No doubt, some experiences may have left emotional and physical scars- but for the most part there was some good.

The fact that we exist in this universe- makes us indebted to the creator who gave us life.Gratitude for not only the good things in our life, but also the problems, our mistakes.And when we realize there is a loving source behind everything, we can be grateful.Also for our surroundings, the wonder and beauty of nature that is immaculate.When we feel gratitude, and acknowledge the source, we allow ourselves to feel joy and peace. We feel complete. The circle is complete. We have been given, we receive and we appreciate in gratitude.

Even the poorest of the poor can be rich if they have gratitude.For the breath the breathe, the life they have, the little comfort they enjoy.The little that the poor have is better than a feast at the rich with no gratitude or happiness.Gratitude is wealth. Gratitude is joy. Gratitude brings out the best in others and in us.Gratitude releases the negative and brings in the positive.We cannot be grateful without forgiving another.We cannot be grateful and hold grudges and thoughts of retribution or revenge.If someone has caused us to suffer loss or damaged us or our possessions to some degree and to this day cannot repay, should we be grateful?

Before we can experience gratitude in the face of wrong, we have to experience forgiveness. Of the event, the perpetuator, and of ourselves. Then we can go on and be grateful.
"When we harbor negative emotions toward others or toward ourselves, or when we intentionally create pain for others, we poison our own physical and spiritual systems….The challenge .. is to refine our capacity to love others as well as ourselves and to develop the power of forgiveness. Carolyn Myss, Anatomy of the Spirit

My 26th birthday must have been the turning point in my life ,but i am realizing that everyday i see changes ,changes everywhere ,in the world, in my life ,in my friends and in everything. But what i really like is, all the change that is positive.

Touching a life can be done in so many ways, there are some of you who, unknowingly touched my life, changed the way i see life and vice versa. It may take ages for every one of us to reach this point, a point in life where we realize that we are no better or worse than the next person. We all have made mistakes, we all have been offended, we all have had time when we thought we were going to give up. Some of us have walked bumpy dusty roads of loneliness, we lost friends as we made new friends, and we left old worlds and walked in completely new worlds.

I like the fact that I now have the strength to show my appreciation, through a rather humble way, just by writing a simple note that will be archived in my secret locker, for those who will come after me to know that once upon a time,Tendai had a minute to salute his friends,collegues and peers who ,through one way or another had influence in his future.


Toni Stuart,although I may not express it,I owe you so much for the shoulder you gave me when we needed to discuss all those challenging issues I could not deal with alone.A few people know you the creative genious behind most of Trail of Hope press releases.Inviting me to talk to your high school students in Hout Bay,Cape Town meant so much to me.

To my sisters and friends Belinda Mutinhiri ,Melissa Tswana ,Elizabeth Tswana ,Tendai Chakanyuka , Phindi Mngomezulu,Lusanda Mahlasela ,Jacqui Hurt ,Raquel Wilson ,Shibu P Mamokgere ,Tracy Lee Brown ,Mireille Blake ,Esther Jumbo ,Angela Luff ,Marvelous Nyahuye ,Marceline Mutikori you have proven what it means to be real friends.Lusanda ,you know our friendship has passed the ordinary mark, it would be no surprise if I change my surname to Mahlasela and we officially become siblings !Tendai Chakanyuka that interview at Power FM in Zimbabwe will always be in my memories as one of those defining moments in my life.Melissa you know what it means for us to be like siblings,I will take you to Mutoko when you come to Zimbabwe! Jacqui you know the promise!I always smile when I remember the first day when we met! Tracy and Mireille Cape Town would not be that lovely without you!Guys I know I may fail to mention you,you know my number call me if you realise you not mentioned.Andy Wilson ,Emmanuel Ivogba ,Robert Mukondiwa ,Brett Santillan ,Ephraim Chaparadza ,Thozamile Ganjana ,Albert Arcona

I might have not mentioned you but remember you have had an influence in my life.I thank God for letting us know each other.

Tendai

can we proudly hold our heads high as a child rights conscious world?

The reality of an estimated 12 000 Zimbabwe’s children living on the streets came to a head when some of them gang raped a 38 year old woman in February this year. An act that can not be condoned no matter from which angle you look at it. However, looking at this unfortunate incident in isolation will not direct one to the root of the problem nor will it inform on a lasting solution. The gang rape of the woman does stand out in its gruesomeness and its implications of gender based violence. It should be acknowledged, however, that crime by children living on the streets has become an everyday occurrence that is ignored and at times engineered by members of mainstream society. A case in point being the accountant who connived with two children living on the streets to steal $100 million from her employer. Recently five of these children were paraded before a Harare magistrate for stealing 12 cell phones. The above scenario points to the fact that business and indeed the man or woman on the street can at any time be prey to children living on the street. A number of questions however arise. What are our children doing on the streets? Where have we failed them? What informs crime by children living on the streets? How should we respond to the reality of children living on the streets? Unless we can honestly answer these questions the problem of children living on the streets will continue to haunt us unabated.


Why the streets
Children do not belong to the streets. How then have we managed to send 12 000 of our children to live on the streets. Many reasons have been offered by the children themselves chief among which are child rights violations at family level. Granted, the family system has been brought to its knees by HIV and AIDS and economic hardships. Divorce and death has increased the prevalence of step parenting. In dealing with these challenges adults have trodden on children’s rights by failing to fulfil rights to participation, survival and development and non-discrimination. The best interests of the child have not taken centre stage. While government has put in place policies that encourage communities to take care of children in need of care, there has been a huge gap in political will to support community based structures from the fiscas. Children have therefore not been able to access proper health care, food, love and family life, protection, education, clothing, psychosocial support, birth registration and inheritance in the homes and communities that they live in. Child abuse, including sexual abuse by people who are in loco parentis, has become common place in the children’s environment. Trust and faith in mainstream society’s willingness and ability to look after children has been destroyed and children have therefore headed for the streets in their thousands.

Current Responses
That children should not live on the streets is a matter on which everyone is agreed. Responses however have tended to be high handed, authoritarian, piecemeal and not in the best interests of the child. The authorities have responded by rounding them up using sheer force and dumping them in children’s homes and farming areas. In the process 2 year olds ended up in children’s homes while their parents were in farming areas, a clear case of family disintegration. A snap survey in the children’s homes showed that a majority of the children placed in these homes have since run away back to the streets. It is not difficult to understand why children would run away form these institutions. Most of the homes are operating beyond their capacity as most of their children have been placed by the Department of Social Welfare on a place of safety basis, a temporary arrangement that is supposed to last for two weeks while the state is either trying to locate the family or finding a permanent home for the child. As Mrs. Karadzandima, Center Manager of Chinyaradzo Children’s’ Home states “in most cases the home finds itself stuck with children who are supposed to be on transit because the Department of Social Welfare has no manpower to do probation work”. To make matters worse those institutions are barely managing since government only supports them with $3 000.00 per child per month.

Families of these children have responded by pretending they are not missing a family member. Mainstream society at large has responded by being indifferent, exploitative and outright snobbish. The concept of duty towards all children has been lost completely as is illustrated by the report in the press that the magistrate court guests in the public gallery laughed when the arrested children gave their home address, as a street in Harare. If we can laugh at the homelessness of our children, where is our sense of shame? The media has responded by calling them “street kids”, a “menace” that should be “cleaned up”. Often when a supposedly responsible citizen, connives with children living on the streets to engage in crime, the children make the headlines while the real criminal, the citizen is mentioned in passing. There has been refusal to address the question of why these children will run away from children’s homes or from their families. Authorities have been preoccupied with appearing to do “something” about the problem by hiding them from the face of our streets. The action has not been taken with the active participation of the children, they have therefore headed back for the streets. On the streets when they rape and steal from innocent souls, it seems convenient to forget the role everybody has played in informing that kind of behaviour.

The Best Interests of the Child
Zimbabwe not only has a moral obligation to all its children, but a legal one as well. By signing the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), the Zimbabwe government committed itself to ensuring that its citizens uphold child rights. The CRC provides that a child has a right to be cared for by its family and if the family is unable or unwillingly to do so the state has an obligation to care for such a child. It is the same Convention that obligates all duty bearers to act in the best interests of the child. If the best interests of the child are to be the guiding principle in addressing the challenge of children living on the streets, Doreen Mukwena, a child rights practitioner prescribes the following steps:

An intervention oriented towards participatory family and community reintegration for both the child and family living on the streets.
Budgetary allocation for programmes aimed at building life skills for former children living on the streets.
Budgetary allocation for programmes targeting the strengthening of community based child care mechanisms so that children do not envy the streets.
Removal of the children from the streets would aim to assist the child to realise their full potential.
Mainstreaming of child rights in all planning and actions at family, community and national level.

Only when we have removed our children from the streets and assisted them in reorienting their lives towards being responsible citizens and made our homes chid friendly, can we proudly hold our heads high as a child rights conscious nation.

http://www.childprotection.co.zw/

Trail of Hope-Zimbabwe visit

From the 13th to the 16th of August i visited Zimbabwe's capital city Harare together with a friend.The mission was to carry out an execise like we will be doing on the Trail of Hope and our chosen homes were Chinyaradzo and Upenyu Utsva Children Homes.All of them are situated in Highfields an old township west of the Capital City.

Well interesting is the fact that visited Upenyu Utsva just by accident in 2001 when i was in a UNICEF program that took us to Masiye Camp in Bulawayo and due to the death of one of the Ministers ,our trip was postponed by a day and we ended up sleeping at Upenyu Utsva,whoever might have had made that decision helped me to have a clear understanding of life in a children's home.Honestly i diod not sleep for the whole night as i heard one story after another of how the boys had ended up at the home.Another interestig fact is the Home[Upenyu Utsva] used to be a juvenile prison,but was later converted into an ophanage.However the tag seem to still remain upto this day ,as most of the infrastructure still in use dates back to 1962 when the institution was established.

But on my mission i needed to know more than just the priosn history.I wanted to know how the boys have been coping,i wanted to eat what they are eating and play with them all the games they play as well as watch with them the TV programmes they watch.How life is like at Upenyu Utsva,but most importantly dep down i knew i was going to adopt the home.So much may be written but the truth is,there is one man at the home ,who is referred to as father by the children,he told me something that will forever guide me in all that i do.He has been working with the institution since 1972 yes thats it 1972,since it was a juvenile institution then into transition to an ophanage.He knows no high living,but to me he said what matters to him are the children.He works for US$100 per month,but still he is there for the children when they need him.When we arrived at the ophanage he was coming from the Garden ,a self sustaining project that has helped the ophanage to weather the harsh economic climate that gripped the tiny beautiful country before the GNU government was formed.

I then had to visit where the boys sleep,as well as their toilets and bathrooms.If i say more i would be unfair,what i observed can be put into three simple words THEY NEED HELP.

Firstly the beds,blankets as well as their clothing are just but too old.Most of them were walking bare footed but what worried me was when we went to visit the bathrooms and toilets.THe facilities are rasty and old,with dirty water on the floor but still the children walk in and out of there with bare feet!I know its hard to do everything for them but something must be done to help them.I also wonder how many charities are in as much need as this particular one we visited?