Family Joys and Sorrow

Yesterday, I said good-bye to Annette, Bizet, and Abby at Harare Intl. Airport, and they were off to Jo’burg and then to Washington, D.C., where they will separate, Annette going to Chicago and to her nursing class reunion on Saturday, Biz and Abby returning to Boston. Biz and Abby arrived in Harare as scheduled May 31 and gave us an outstanding 12 days together. They quickly came to love their host family, the Mudonhis, which includes seven-year-old Anesu (Silas) and three-year-old Ashley. The second day after they arrived, Biz and Abby were hard at work at Old Mutare Hospital, sorting and counting medications, and shortly before their leaving, Biz completed a spreadsheet showing quantities of medications available. She also gave two lectures to A level Biology students at the high school, one on careers in health care and research, and another on the transmission mechanisms of cholera, malaria, HIV-AIDS, and tuberculosis, with much interaction with students in both sessions. Abby quickly became a star with kids of all ages, and she found a keen following among high school students when she worked with me in my classes, and in addition, with quite a few upper level young men. She went home with a stack of names and addresses of students who want to stay in touch. Amid all that activity, we had enough time for leisurely visiting. All in all, it added up to something very special, not least because of the evident appreciation of Old Mutare leaders. Last Friday evening, our family was honored at a festive dinner at the home of the headmaster of Hartzell High School, Mr. Mabvumbe, with many of the local leaders present. The food and hospitality were marvellous, and we were unusually stirred by the kind words addressed to us by people who have become our good friends.

A week ago Saturday, Annette led the third of her quilting workshops with nine women at sewing machines, ardently sewing quilt blocks from strips of colorful material. At the end of the day, those women sang their thanks to Annette, and after words of tribute to her skills and interest in them, they presented her with an elegant, hand painted wall hanging. Although bothered by laryngitis, Annette was obviously very happy and content that her workshops had been successful, measured mostly by the joy of the women who participated. During this past week, she provided additional teaching and patterns to key women whom she feels will most likely pass on their skills to others.

This has been an exciting time around Fairfield Children’s Home. The long-awaited ocean-going container arrived, full of good things packed by Methodist church members in South Carolina. There are dozens of bicycles, much children’s clothing, foods of many kinds, gardening tools, beds, and more, including the center of attention, a 9N Ford tractor beautifully restored to near-mint condition by a group called Tractors for Our Daily Bread in Manhattan, KS. The last 9N came off Ford production lines in 1943, so this has to be an old tractor. When I saw it in the container, I was surprised by a flood of emotion. It is the tractor my dad had on his Iowa farm when our children were young, and I got an instant mental picture of him going about his barnyard chores on that little tractor, one or two kids bouncing on the fender beside him, loving their adventure. I can hardly wait for the opportunity to get into the seat of that tractor, a wagon behind loaded with Fairfield kids enjoying their jaunt as much as my children did 35-40 years ago. There were a few uncertain hours during the process of bringing the container to Old Mutare, notably about customs duties and agricultural inspections. All finally worked out well, the only glitch being the quarantine of all jars of Wal-Mart peanut butter until a test of purity and safety has been completed. Try explaining that to the manager of your favorite Wal-Mart store!

The excitement of the container’s arrival was marred by the passing of one of the Fairfield children. Shingarai had lived in house 7a for two years. His little body had already resisted several serious illnesses, but this time he was unable to fight off an assault by meningitis and pneumonia, and he died in a Harare hospital. His body was brought back for a funeral service and burial at Old Mutare last Monday. It was tremendously touching to walk in the funeral procession between single-file lines of his uniformed schoolmates at Hartzell Central Primary School at the sides of the road, stretching for a hundred meters or more, big and small, standing still and silent as the procession passed by. Shingarai, nine years old, is now added to all those statistics that depict the plight of African children dying of disease treatable in much of the world but here, far too often, a death sentence. He was an orphan; there was no family at his funeral—that too, a picture of reality for increasing numbers of African children.