Youth centret vi bor på i Guwe

Youth centret vi bor på i Guwe

mandag 8. november 2010

Goodbye Guwe

Last week was our last week with BUIYSAP, and even though we only had work to do on our computers hence it would have been easier to stay in town, we had a strong wish of staying out in “our” rural area one last time. We managed to get some petrol and filled up the generator, and enjoyed the simple life of Guwe for the last few days. It has been so hot, and finally Wednesday the first rains came. A lot of rain, and along with the rain came the bugs. Never have I seen a bigger selection of bugs than what I’ve seen the past week!! The night of the rain we all of a sudden had about 20 frogs jumping both inside and outside of the centre, and a spider the size of my hand was welcomed us when we walked into our bedroom. The day after was even worse, a few seconds after turning on the generator in the evening hundreds of flying creatures showed up outside, and soon enough inside the centre. While Malaika and I was looking at the swarm of bugs with the greatest disgust, some of the boys happily rushed into the swarm with a bucket of water and started to hit the bugs into the bucket. It turns out these bugs are eaten as a snack, - you pull of their wings and their upper body and then fry their bums in a pot together with some oil. The boys got the youngest guy called Handsome to sit in this swarm for about two hours to pick the bugs and take their wings of. Nice job.
When we walked into our bedroom, the bugs were everywhere, but by this time their wings had fallen off, resulting in a hundred pairs of wings being scattered across our bedroom floor and small bugs running around. I don’t know how many bugs we managed to kill, but it turns out they release a certain smell when you kill them, leaving our bedroom in a horrible smell. Horroshow. Thank god for our mosquito nets! (Well, not completely, Malaika woke up twice having a cockroach crawling on her arm).

Friday night we wanted to do something nice with all the youth, but not being sure what to do or how they usually a have party, we told everyone to at least come down during the night so we could say goodbye to them. Late afternoon we decided we actually had enough food for everyone, and before we knew it, ten guys were making up the fire and getting ready to cook. Later they entertained us with some traditional songs and dances, then we cooked marshmallows on the fire, something no one had tried before! One of the guys managed to borrow the loudspeakers from the shops, and the minute the music was turned on all 40 of them rushed to the dance floor, and danced for three hours, until we had told them “this is the last song!, ten times.

It was a bit hard to leave Guwe Saturday morning, but my newly adopted strategy of saying “See you soon” instead of “Goodbye” really does help. The kids are writing their exams these weeks, and we have told everyone to let us know how they go, which they won’t know before February/March next year. I know it will be hard to stay in touch with most of them, especially since the majority will keep living in the rural areas where the outside world seems very far away - there is hardly any network, and ofcourse no internet. It is hard to say where these youth will go from here, they have been lucky enough to be sponsored by BUIYSAP to finish high school, but most of them do not have funds for going further to colleges and universities. The majority will probably end up as peasant farmers just like their parents, growing maize and having a few cows. It all depends on the political and economical situation in Zimbabwe, it is very interesting to see what will happen. I just read that according to a new survey by the UN Development Programm, Zimbabwes Human Development Index is worse off now than it was in 1970. The report, which came out last week, claims Zimbabwe has the worst living standards in the world.

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