Zimbabwe

I arrived in Mutare, Zimbabwe last Saturday after a long bus ride from Nelspruit through Johannesburg to Harare. Farai, the Hands at Work service centre coordinator in Mutare, came to pick us up in Harare and drive us the 3 and a half hours to Mutare. I traveled with Emily and her niece Faith and her nephew Divine. All in all it was a great trip with not too many hiccups along the way.

A team from Calgary arrived a day after us, and it's been great to see some familiar faces. This is the first team to be hosted in Mutare, and the team is doing well to settle in and to learn and help and the volunteers here have been doing an excellent job in hosting. The people in Zim are incredibly welcoming.

I was last here in November 2008, and at that time most of the shelves were empty, so it's been good to see that things have improved over the last year: there's food on the shelves, petrol at the gas stations, and generally the city has more vitality.

I've been living with Emily and her family, and have been spoiled by their hospitality. Everyone enjoys poking fun at my misunderstandings of culture and my inability to quickly grasp Shona (the local language). But Emily's mom has such confidence in my ability to learn, that she speaks to me as though I was fluent: undaunted by my expressions of confusion. Emily's sister and sister-in-law are great in the kitchen and I even got my shirts ironed for me (each person in the house commented that I couldn't leave the house looking like 'that' in reference to my wrinkled shirt... they said that people would think that I was mentally disturbed... Maybe my shirt was a cry for help!)

Mutare and the surrounding areas are incredibly beautiful. It's a mountainous area with mountains more similar to those in the Okanagan than the rockies. Tomorrow we head with the team to Honde Valley, which is about 130 km away from Mutare. It's the area that Hands is looking to partner with another community based organisation.

I'll try to update soon. The internet here is ssslllloooowwww and not that reliable.