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.