Ruvimbo Eline Murisa

playing nhodo, which is an African version of jacks, played with small stones.

Ruvimbo is 10 years old and lives with her mother,father and little sister. Her parents were able to buy a piece of property and plan to build a house some day. In the mean time they have built this small two room house where they now live, while trying to earn and save money for building materials. They will build their home on the open spot in front of their house. All of their neighbors are living in similar small shelters and are at various stages of building their homes. Notice the wall of bricks ready to help make the foundation of their new home.

 This small attachment to their home is used as a play area for the neighborhood children.

 This fire pit helps block the wind so it is easier to keep the fire at an even temperature for cooking. All the Murisa's meals are prepared in this area. Ruvimbo takes her turn cooking the meals.

 This inclosuer is their bathroom. They just take a bucket of water in with them when they bath. I honestly don't know what they do when they need to go #1 or #2, I forgot to ask and I saw no sewer line or opening.

   People choose to wash their dishes like this and then just leave them stacked there until the next meal. Notice the water pipe in front of the green plant. It's a great blessing to have a water source on your property. When the bottom of the pan is scrubbed to get off the sut, they just scrape up some sand and use it to scour the pan.

It is Ruvimbo's job to keep their floors polished. Mom says Ruvimbo can bend and kneel a lot easier than she can.

 The girls sleep here on the living/kitchen floor. They fold their blanket up in the day and store it on their mothers bed.

The family girls  sitting on mom and dads bed.

 Gogo  (grandmother) has come from the capital city to visit for a few days.

 Ruvimbo's dad is still at work so he is not in this picture of family and friends. Sister muriza is the woman on the right with the headdress. Ruvimbo's sister is in the front in the yellow shirt.

You can't see the rope but she is jump roping which is call "fish fish" here in Zimbabwe. Jump rope is one of the games they like to play when they can find something to swing.

After watching them play with stones I went to the car and got these jack's that Ann had sent from Utah. They were very excited about them, I say they because the grown ups were more excited than the kids. Elder J took a few minutes and showed them how to play jacks, American style.

You can see the neighbor's to the east of them, notice the partially built house. There will eventually be two more homes built between them and their neighbor's.

                                    

Every direction you look you see homes in various stages of being completed.

To the left of the Murisa's the house has been completed. Three families now live there and another family stays in the wood shack in front of it.

Natasha Chauke

11 yrs old, 25 April

Natasha and her mother in front of their 7 room home in Chikanga. They are doing some constuction to make two of their bedrooms larger. She is her mothers only child. They live with her grandmother, two Uncle's, one of which just returned form a mission in Ugnada and they rent one room to a woman who lives in the back of the house. 

They take wonderful care of their year which has lots of flowers and is very pretty.

 Natasha with her grandmother. Grandmothers are called "GOGO" here in Zimbabwe.

 People go bare foot much of the time. When they walk on rocks they show no sign of pain. Even when the road is very hot, it doesn't hurt their feet.

 They have a large kitchen with cubboards, stove and freezer. They have electricity part of each day and at least three times a week can cook supper on their stove. Natasha does the dishes after meals at the kitchen sink, where they enjoy running water.

 When they don't have electricity, called "Zesa", they cook outside at this fire pit or when it's raining they cook inside on this parafin stove (red below).

                                      

 This is the laundry area. Each day after school Natasha washes her socks and uniform so it is clean for school the next day.

 It is mango season! You meet many a person on the street chewing on a mango.

Natasha is in the 7th grade. Mom says she has lots of homework, but enjoys school. There are 39 kids in her class. Her school is very close to her home, only a 5 minute walk. After school she likes to watch TV, read or play ball games with her friends. Again if they play ball it's made of plastic bags that they roll up.

                                    Natasha and her mother share a bedroom and this double bed.

                                        This is her toy that she likes to cuddle when she sleeps.

                                   Natasha has a cubboard for her belongings in her bedroom

                                                This is the family shower. Running cold water

                    Family toilet. With the new addition they are going to add another bathroom.

They enjoy a nice livingroom set, where there is room for the family to sit in the evenings and enjoy time together.

Family picture (minus the return missionary who was at school). They are under a tree in their front yard.

Here you can see the addition they are making to their home and the maze (corn) that nearly everyone has growing in their yards.

 This is the street in front of Natasha's home. Occasionally you will see a bus. This is one for picking up children for a pre school.

Again, Natasha's street and neighborhood. Most people don't own car's so there are always people walking in the streets.

Rutendo Eveline Chikafa

born 2 Nov 2000

This 4 pelx is where Rutendo lives, the second door from the left.  This house has two rooms, a kitchen/family room/bedroom, and a parents bedroom.  The house has electricity but they only have it 3 times a week.  This house is in the suburb of Sakubva which is a high density living area. Lot's of houses  built very close together with many families living in them.

 Rutendo is on the left in pink.  She has two brothers and a sister.  The family has lived in the house for 12 years. They have been paying money to the city council to get a piece of property to build a home of their own.

 This is the kitchen/living room/bedroom area.  When there is no electricity they cook outside which is on average every other day.

 Washing the dishes is one of Rutendo's jobs.  Take a bucket of water, a little soap and start scrubbing, the house has no running water.

 Here Rutendo and her mother are walking to the community laundry, water, and toilet area.

 This is a Zimbabwe toilet.  Notice, no toilet paper, either you bring your own or go without. At night the family uses a bucket if they need the rest room rather than walk down to the community toilet.

 No doors on the stalls.  The shower is on the other wall directly across for the toilet holes. It is an open area with several shower heads. There were five women bathing so I took no picture. People aren't concerned when you walk in, every one is washing and talking, I was the only uncomfortable person in the room, and I was the only one with clothes on.

 Rutendo is filling her bucket to carry water back to their home. This troff is were they do their laundry. The ladies bring large bowls and scrub their clothes and rinse them all by hand and then carry them home where they hang them on a line by their front door. There is a lot of thievery so you stand guard over your clothes while they are drying.

 She is carrying about 18 liters of water weighing approximately 37 pounds and doesn't act like it is even heavy. Women carry everything but their babies on their heads.

 We asked Rutenda what games she likes to play. This game is called pada. After making the squares with a piece of charcoal from the cook fire, she hops on one foot and scoots a piece of wood from one box to the next. It looked so easy we thought how could this be fun? But when we tried to do it we found it was quite challenging and it didn't look easy anymore. She also likes to play net ball. They make a ball out of used plastic bags and then go to a near by court where there are nets or they just draw a box on the ground. She doesn't have any toys, nor do her brothers.

 

Like the majority of students she walks to school, there home is less than a mile from her school. Kids are usually pretty grateful for the opportunity to go to school so they study hard.

I asked her to show us where she sleeps,  she unrolled a mat and her brother moved over the kitchen table. She and her brothers and sister all sleep there on the kitchen floor. Guess there is no sleeping in, with this family.

 This is a family picture minus her father who is still at work. He is an accountant at the Provincial Hospital. Her father is also the branch president of the Sakubva Branch.

Notice the large green bush in front of their house?  That is sugar cane, everyone loves to chew on sugar cane.