Day 1: Monday

Monday. I suppose almost everybody dislikes that beginning-of-the-week feeling. Not that our weekend had been particularly exhausting. It was nice, and even a little busy, but no all-night parties or heavy drinking. Sometimes I feel like we’re getting too old for that…

This Monday looked as if it was going to be busy. Since my return from Tanzania, everything seems to have shifted gears up, with the partner organisations busy and buzzing, and a budget to finish before the end of the year.
Anyway, got up at 6.30, at the same time as Thomas (who has to leave the house by 7am, poor guy). No time for our shared cup of coffee, cause he is off. I linger in the house for another two hours, slowly waking up, reading a Stephen King novel. In accordance to my morning rituals, some capoeira to warm up, I play a game of chess against the computer (with a desperate need for the undo-button in order to win).

Monday is help-day. We have two people who come twice a week: Constance, who washes our clothes and cleans the house, and the gardener. He gets here at 8am. He looks at our pool with concern. Our pool has been tricky. When we just got here, green beyond salvation. After some half hearted attempts to clean it out, we emptied it (about 80.000litres, can you imagine) and left it like that for the July-August months that are a bit cool anyway. We filled it back up (taking four days) beginning of September. So nice to jump in the pool in the morning, and it often served as a handy pool of water when we had no water in the pipes. But, since our stay in Tanzania, it has been slowly but inevitably been turning back to the green side of things. Chlorine, changing the sand of the filter, pH control, the chemicals cost an arm and a leg and aren’t doing much good. Sigh. I always though having a pool would be wonderful, but it is turning out to be quite a hassle and a challenge.

Two minutes after he leaves, Constance arrives. I don’t like calling her the maid. It feels funny having a maid. But still, it is so nice not to have to worry about our clothes, or coming home and finding the house cleaned and the beds made. We pay her 20USD for the month, for 8 days of work. It feels like peanuts to me, but it considered more than a handsome salary here. If you know a full time teacher makes 1,5USD a month (62,000Zim$). And at least it is US$, so she only has to change it when she needs the money, without it losing all its value. Constance lives just around the corner. Often, in the afternoons, her daughter comes and stays at our house, which sometimes worries me. If she breaks anything, or falls in the pool or something... I offered to pay Constance for the school fees separately, as a way to stimulate her keeping the child in school, but she hasn’t taken me up on it yet.
Once Constance is in the house, I can leave. Vanessa, my colleague, calls me up. She is going to see Mavambo, one of our partners. Since they want to send some people to a youth camp, I drop off some money at her place to give it to them.

Then, with the bike to the office. There I am greeted by Carrie, my Belgian colleague who is coordinating the programme on agriculture. We get along well. I am so glad she’s here, cause if not, I would have often been working by myself in the office. And we think along the same lines. And of course, without her help, we would have been lost very often. Illustration: last week, when I ran out of fuel with my motorbike, she was the one I called to come to my rescue, bringing the container we have with petrol from our house. She now brought the container back, all filled up again. Honestly, without a little (actually, a big!) help from your friends, Zimbabwe would be impossible to live in for us. You have to rely so often on others…

Two big things for this week on my professional plate:

• the exchange of six staff members from Harare to the youth camp Thuthuka is organising, just out of Bulawayo. This camp is for street children and is meant as a preparation for them to return to (a) home or family. These transitions are often difficult, and the better prepared the kid is, the more the chances are for it to be successful.
• A training around child rights and protection that we’re planning in Zambia mid-November. It asks for so much time and effort, especially since it is abroad (and has to be in order for us to receive the funding for it). Originally, we wanted to do this with one of the partner organisations also working with orphans in Zambia, Chikankata, an institution that has quite an expertise and good facilities to host this one week training. But the planned week was taken, so instead we have to do it all ourselves. Ourselves, meaning me, and thank god, Kristien, who is based in Zambia and coordinating the orphans programme with the 8 partners there. I wouldn’t have been able to organise it without her, since we really want to have it tailor-made to our requests.

Well, anyway, all of that and a million other things kept me busy. Went home for a quick lunch (left-over rice and tuna from Sunday’s birth day party).

In the evening we had two people over for games. Always a bit of a gamble, since we’re never sure to have power and some games just ain’t the same in the dark. Since both our days had been running late, it meant a quick meal or getting something delivered. After a couple of phone calls around, we saw that chances of getting home delivery were very slim in nowadays Zim. So, instead, we decided on a wok. Only vegetables, cause Faray is vegetarian. Loads of soja sauce and it tasted great. We definitely have discovered the pleasures of wokking here…
As for the game, I improvised our local version of Party & Co (a sort of mixture of taboo – pictionnary – charades/hints) and it was great fun. Around 23h30, we bid Marcel goodnight and I drove Faray back (he lives really close to our offices, so only 5 minutes away). Another full and fulfilling day…