Zimbabwe: platforms and pavements
Updated on 09 June 2009
The homeless people of Zimbabwe who sleep on station platforms and pavements are just the tip of the iceberg of the population's need, writes Helen.
My small donation towards the work Sheila does was meticulously recorded in her crowded notebook and she thanked me as she handed over a receipt.
"Platforms and pavements" Sheila had written next to the amount received and, in response to my raised eyebrows, she explained.
A woman wearing grimy, tattered clothes spends her nights on the platform of the railway station with her nine year old grand-daughter.
In the day time the woman and child are chased away by railway staff but every night they come back when no one's around. The grandmother lost her one room in an overcrowded high density block of flats when she could no longer pay the US$40 monthly rent.
Sheila calls the woman 'Gogo' (Shona for grandmother) and she shakes her head and sighs as she describes the circumstances of the pair.
Gogo's husband left years ago, she has no idea where he is or even if he is still alive. Gogo went to live with her daughter and son in law, helping with the cooking and tending a small vegetable plot at first and then caring for them as they got sicker.
Gogo's daughter and her husband were both HIV positive and without ARVs they died of AIDS three years ago. Gogo is now the sole carer of her grand-daughter and Sheila helps them whenever she can.
A bar of soap, packet of maize meal, bag of rice or soya mince or a kilo of dry beans are some of the staples that Sheila buys and gives to Gogo and other homeless, hungry people.
Whenever she has a few spare US dollars, Sheila buys as many loaves of bread as she can and gives them to people that she finds shivering against the walls on the railway platform or huddled in shop doorways.
Blankets are desperately needed but the cheapest, thinnest grey blankets, such as those used for furniture removals, are US$15 and beyond the reach of individual's trying to keep ordinary Zimbabweans from starving.
Sheila describes a man she has come across who seems to be losing his mind, she thinks from malnutrition, and a mother of three who has turned to prostitution in a desperate attempt to feed her children. She talks of another man, skeletally thin, who is a fine carpenter but who cannot find work, cannot afford to leave the country and is starving.
Platforms and pavements are the tip of the iceberg.
I met a young mother carrying a baby wrapped in a towel on her back. One of the child's eyes was hugely swollen and when I asked what was wrong the mother said the baby had an infection and needed an antibiotic.
Despite being a single mother and unemployed the nurses at the clinic were unable to dispense the drug for free. A simple antibiotic costing US$5 was completely out of reach of the young mother.
As we stood on the road talking, the woman jiggled the baby on her back, patting him repeatedly to try and stop the almost incessant crying. She asked me if I had any idea who she could ask for help. The social welfare department had no money, the hospital couldn't help and even her local church was unable to assist.
A local Pastor I met recently said that their Sunday collections from five churches had dwindled to less than US$100 a month. Parishioners just don't have anything to spare as the country has converted to American dollars. The churches are full but the collection plates are empty.
