Muchada Village
Muchada Village is in Masvingo Province. Masvingo Province is the province in Zimbabwe with the highest HIV/AIDS infection rate. Muchada village is like most other African villages in that it is the most wonderful yet poverty stricken place to live. The people who live in them are subsistence farmers. They are wonderful because everyone helps each other. Zimbabweans are famous for their warmth and generosity. For example, one family built a well and all the other villagers were invited to use it. In the villages people act as one unit, not as separate families. Despite their poverty the people who live in the village are generally happy. In this village, most of the productive adults of the village, or adult villagers who lived in the city, have died of AIDS. Now the elders, some of whom are very old, have to take care of the village children. Some of these children were born in the village. Some children have come back to their village from the cities because their parents have died.
The elders in the village are doing the best they can to help the AIDS orphans, but they are old and cannot do much work in the fields anymore. Because they are subsistence farmers they do not make money from their farming. Many of the elders are not educated because when Zimbabwe was Rhodesia, the villagers were not provided with an education. Because they are old, uneducated, and have no financial resources, they have to continue their lives as subistence farmers. Now they find their grandchildren still continue to be poor and uneducated because their parents have died of AIDS. Some of the children in the village use to live in the city and had running water, heat, plumbing, and lived a nice life in the city. Now that their parents have died they have gone back to the villages. We believe we should try to help this village help their AIDS orphans because instead of rejecting them, they take care of them with loving arms. You see in the African culture, your home is the village no matter where you live or where you were born. The children of the village still belong to the village and not just their parents, so the whole village tries to look after the village children. This is where the expression "that it takes a vllage to raise a child" comes from. |
