Today it was housing.

I live in a rather mixed area (code for having a cement works across the road). I have a house with two reception rooms, a large kitchen, two bathrooms and four bedrooms. No, this hasn’t morphed into Location, Location – if it had I wouldn’t have told you about the cement works. I think my house is nice but simple – I feel comfortable where I live, it’s not too posh to make me feel guilty. I live there with my husband and daughter.

Today I met families, some of more than 30 people, living in squashed conditions. Gogo, a woman the Practical Action project has helped, said to me: “I have 34 people in my family – they all live in my house. I have five rooms for 34 people – before the project I had only three. There is me, my children, my grandchildren and my grandchildren’s children. It is very hard to get houses. I have three daughters who have dead husbands, they had to come back when their husbands died. In our tradition when a man dies his family will throw his wife and children out and tell them to go back to their family. I have such a big family because of the deaths.”

34 people living in one house seemed impossible – so she invited me to go and have a look.

The old part of the house was tiny. “This is where my son lives with his family,” said Gogo pointing to a really small bedroom, “this is where my daughter lives with her kids,” pointing to a largish store cupboard, “and I sleep in here with the orphans,” this was the small living room cum kitchen. We then went to the new front of the house where Practical Action had built two new rooms and a veranda. The new part of the house was much bigger than the old and again we had the tour of rooms that were each home to one family.

“You really all sleep in here?” I said somewhat dismayed, and of course they did. They are quite proud of their new house, although of course they would like to extend more – and then I thought about how they used to live and how there was no way they would have all fitted in. It was impossible and it must have led to some terrible choices.

Gogo is a great lady – just like many other of the women I meet.

Now if anyone happens to know someone quite famous who writes about a boy living in a cupboard under the stairs, could you ask them to conjure up some magic and let the families of women like Gogo escape from their cupboards. At the moment they are grateful for somewhere safe and inside to sleep.

Margaret

This entry was posted on Friday, November 6th, 2009 at 6:02 pm and is filed under Field reports, Zimbabwe. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.