It was back in June 2014 that I first visited Zimbabwe. I came with my Mum and two others, Pat and Vicar Ronnie, as part of a church link. For some reason unknown to me the Diocese of Rochester linked churches in Kent to churches in Harare, the capital of Zimbabwe. The link between St Paul's (the church I grew up in Rusthall) and St Peter's (located in Mabelreign, Harare) had been going for sometime without either congregation knowing much about the other. I joined the team with the aim of rectifying this estrangement. The four of us had a wonderful two weeks of meeting the parishioners, journeying to Victoria Falls and mostly eating more sadza and chicken than my stomach could cope with!
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| At Leopard Rock, Mutare - the fanciest hotel in Zimbabwe |
Fast forward nearly 600 days and I'm back in Harare and volunteering with an amazing charity called Creating Better Futures (CBF). First established by a local Zimbabwean and fellow alumni of the University of Reading, Dorothy Dix set up CBF in the UK with the aim of supplying vulnerable and orphaned children, here in Zim, with an education they would struggle to otherwise access. Now that I'm here, volunteering my skills and meeting the children I am over the moon. However, rewind a month, we had no idea we would be here with CBF - to be honest we were just getting over the shock that we couldn't stay in South Africa and we were overall pretty gutted to be moving on to Harare for a month.
