Okay, Zimbabwe day two … so what have I learnt …?

In the good old days, when authorities had a bit of money they would develop social housing. The high density housing laws required sewers, roads, water and electricity connected before anyone could develop and beyond this everything was connected to a central system. Sounded great and I am told the system worked well. For a while things continued, maintenance was ignored but services held up. Now with the troubles, with agriculture not being so productive and with the impact of climate change, people are moving in to the cities from rural areas. Combined with this there is little expansion of housing and no maintenance in most areas.

A triple whammy of not enough infrastructure, more people and no maintenance. The cholera outbreak last year was this problem manifest.

People would like services to go back to the ‘good old days’ but with enough provision for all. However in Harare alone it’s estimated that there are 500,000 people on the housing waiting list. We can’t just hope for change – we have to start to work from where people are now.

I’ve seen great examples today of Practical Action working with the real, current situation: for example, putting loos into schools and the difference it can make – beyond what you might think. Girls speaking of having decent facilities, not having to wait in line and the special problems they encounter monthly. One girl told me today that in the past she had lacked confidence to go to school because of the loos, but now she was happy. So far we have built toilet blocks in 87 schools, three blocks in each school – one for girls, one for boys and a mini one especially for teachers!

But more than this the headmaster talked about his primary school for 470 children plus 50 more in the nursery where they desperately didn’t have enough toilets. Because they didn’t have enough loos he couldn’t get a health certificate, and without this he couldn’t register the school. Administratively this meant that another school got to manage their budget and sometimes they felt they didn’t get a fair share. Also when children had to take their Year 7 exams they had to be taken to the other school some miles away by bus, and as this school didn’t have enough furniture, they had to take that as well. Now, with the new toilets and handwashing facilities built by Practical Action, they have just received their health certificate and he is confident of getting his school registration by the end of the year. A great result just from loos.

He said, “the children are more than just pleased, I need to emphasise, more than just pleased, in having toilets”. There was a pride too in his voice as he talked about achieving registration and moving on from being a second tier school.

Zimbabwe is a surprising place. The people we work with, as always, are great.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009 at 8:48 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.