My first use in Zimbabwe

Some news from Zimbabwe! This Monday was my first big day! We had our first meeting with all of the partner organizations that I will be working with. They are eight NGO's, all of them working with Orphans and Vulnerable Children (hereafter OVC, in our NGO slang). Four of them work in Harare, the capital, and four of them in Bulawayo, 280km or 6 hours driving to the west. They all touch different aspects of these issues, street children, re-education, counselling, HIV prevention, and a big emphasis is put on psychosocial support. But what they all have in common is that they're trying to train people from the community to take care of these problems, so that they themselves try to meet the challenges. For it isn't easy.

In Zimbabwe, between 20 and 30% of the adult population is HIV positif. The life expectancy has dropped in ten years to an average of 35 years! More than a million children are orphans, often taking care of siblings, which forms one tenth of the population. Before, these children were taken in by family structures, but these are now stretched far beyond their capacity. Putting them in in orphanages is also impossible and would certainly not guarantee proper education. So, they fall back on their community, and to support the community is what our eight partnerorganisations are trying to do.

I must admit I was a bit stressed about our first meeting. First impressions matter, I know from experience, and if we would have gotten off on the wrong foot, it is always hard to correct. I was supposed to have arrived in the beginning of April, which would have allowed me to visit the organizations one by one and get to know them better in a more relaxed way, but since our departure had been delayed several times due to the elections and the resulting instability, I only arrived in the country five days before hand. And to add to my stress, the desk officer from Brussels as well as our regional coordinator, Kristien, with whom we worked in South Africa.

But it went great! Volens doesn't have a lot of money to give, so we have to make the partner organizations understand what we can sponsor (which isn't that much), and what we can't (which is a lot more)! In short, the programme that I am part of can assist them in four main ways:

- attachments: it consists of exchanges of staff members between the organisations, for often, they tend to ignore or worse, compete with organizations active in the same field. This was the mean item on the agenda, to see who wanted to offer what, and I must say, it was amazing! Truly, I have rarely had to facilitate such an enthusiasm and interesting topics that each ONG offered. Specific methodology to do counselling, to work with peers, assure child participation etc. Honestly, impressive! The local expertise definitely sounds great. Now, we had about 15 attachments to offer, but after they all stated their areas of expertise or specific activities that could be interesting for the others, and we went round per month to see who wanted to send a number of staff to attend, well, we got to 332 attachments planned! But I believe we can make most of them happen, even with our limited means, if the ONG themselves also contribute. This can be done evry easily, if they take accommodation or board upon them, instead of putting them in expensive hotels.

- scholarships: staff members can follow trainings regarding specific issues, so that they can improve their functioning.

- specific capacity building on Monitoring & Evaluation and Financial Management: we have two cooperants that are working specifically on these issues, essential in nowadays working with projects and development, so they are there to

- the overall coordinating of the network: that would be yours truly, together with Veerle, the former coordinator for this region. First task will be to visit all of the organisations and document the different trainings that are provided, in one comprehensive basic package. We are also going to integrate a platform started up by UNICEF in September 2007, which is specifically regarding psychosocial support and capacity building.

All of this has to do with our work on three levels, the capacity building on the level of

- people: better trained staff etc.
- organizations: better equipped to follow up the projects,
- interinstitutionnal: they work together, share experiences etc...

All sounds a bit complicated and much NGO vocabulary right? Anyway, it is really looking good and I love it for the moment, so I suppose for my readers that is the most important, no?

All is well in Zimbabwe... Well, we at least are!

Internet is scare, so this message will not be a long one. Thomas and me arrived in Zimbabwe after the 15h flight on Tuesday, where we were greeted by Fred, employe of CTDT, wich is the partnerorganisation of Thomas. He first took us to have a look at the offices of CTDT, but after we displayed all of our fatigue, we were swiflty taken to our guesthouse. Yes, an informal guesthouse, run by Charity, one of the collegues of Thomas. It is a really nice house in the newly built suburbs of Harare, which even has a swimming ppol (which we have not yet been able to enjoy ;-(. We enjoyed charity's hospitality and good food and went to bed early. It already is dark here at 18.30 so that might have contributed to the fact of feeling tired so quickly.

Wednesday was our first day of work for both of us. Thomas went to CTDT, where he was introduced to so many people that he has already forgotten half their names (there are 57 employes there, though some of them work in the field). He is not supposed to go in the countryside for some time, since there is too much unrest there. Me, I met with Veerle and Caroline, our responsables for Volens here and we discussed how to prepare the big meeting next Monday. How to go about it, who get's to speak or not, budget difficulties, it means hitting the ground running. But it feels so good to finally be here, to be active, to begin working! And to have collegues, people to interchange with...

Next, we went with Veerle for pizza (which costs 399 and then a LOT of zeros, but equalled about 10€) to see Gabriel, with whom I'm driving to this big meeting next Monday, cause it is in Bulawayo, which is 5h driving away and planetickets are too expensive. He will be living there so we might take over his appartment, which is actually a house, with two floors and two spatious bedrooms, one for each of us ;-)

This morning I met with Sonah, who works for Oasis Zimabwbe, which is one of my partnerorganisations and who will be in the meeting next Monday. It was nice to already meet one of them before the meeting, so that I already will have one familiar face. Since I was supposed to have arrived 1 of April, I should have already seen quite a lot of them, but due to the elections, that was all postponed! Until now!
Cool to finally be here!!

More news, whenever we have internet, which isn't a lot!

You can text me at my belgian mobistar number +32498670910 and we're trying to get a local SIM card as soon as possible, but since the compagny is state-owned and run, it is quite the bureaucracy... and hard to get through!

Another departure on the horizon, should be the one

Today Zimbabwe celebrated its independance. Mugabe made his first public speech since the elections. It doesn't seem like anything will be changing in the next couple of days, so we're taking our chances and going. Our departure date should once again be on Monday evening, arriving in Harare the Tuesday midday.
Let's see it happen this time hopefully!

To the mountains and fjords of Bergen

Tuesday afternoon we arrived in Bergen, where we just walked around and enjoyed the sun, which is pretty rare in Bergen (285 days of rainfall/year). Wednesday we took the plane back to Oslo and straight on our connecting flight back to Amsterdam-Antwerp.
Here some more pix of our trip, which are now, together with our memories, the only things that remain of our little getaway...

Through the snow of Geilo...

Monday night we spent in a little wooden cabin, in the middle of snow and more snow. Our hitchhiking didn't go too well, so instead we took the bus to Geilo, halfway between Oslo and Bergen, where we spent the night at the youth hostel. Instead of the expected dorm, they gave us a cabin as if we were far in the woods, with kitchenette and all.The day after we took the train for the remainder of the voyage to Bergen, trainride classed in the top twenty of the worlds best trainrides, if you please! Very very impressive (and a bit expensive as well). Endless views of snow, lakes, rivers and fjords...