Friends of Hlekweni Newsletter Spring 2019

A place for every child to learn: alleviating classroom overcrowding

In addition, FoH has agreed to fund ‘temporary classroom’ structures of corrugated iron at both schools and to await news about Mgadla Primary School moving to a new site to see how we can help there. We are committed to a decent place for every child to learn, a robust chair, a desk, a pencil, paper and textbooks in the four schools we support – as well as funding a nutritious school meal. As Jennifer Mpofu said to us, ‘We are trying to create a friendly environment where teachers and learners can thrive’. Marko Dube, the head at Samathonga, commented, ‘Most of the positive results in terms of the health of the children, their learning outcomes and the morale of teachers depend on the school meals’ – even during the teachers’ strike at the beginning of the school year, pupils came to school for the meals.

Three of the four primary schools FoH supports are faced with significant problems on classroom space. Numbers have risen in both Lochview and Ngwenyama schools – now well over 600 in each school divided into just seven classes, plus the Early Childhood classes. During the recent Trustee visit, we saw what schools are doing to help themselves – and how Friends of Hlekweni can help. At Lochview, the new headteacher, Jennifer Mpofu, has taken a pragmatic approach – a large tree in the school grounds was cut down, planed into planks and a timber framed class-room put up. In addition, an extension to an existing classroom was made by erecting posts and roofing with corrugated iron. The current sides are heavy plastic—not ideal for ventilation or light (pictured below). Friends of Hlekweni has pledged to support the cost of cement floors and half-height corrugated sides for the extension classroom. At Ngwenyama Primary School, we have witnessed over the past two years the slow, steady building of a brick classroom for 100 pupils (one year group), almost brick by brick, as funding has permitted. The roof trusses were put on whilst we were there, and in Term 2 (May), two classes of Grade 5 children will at last have their own space. Friends of Hlekweni has pledged to buy 100 chairs and desks for these children.

When there are not enough classrooms to provide decent learning spaces for every child, classes are forced to take it in turns to learn in the open air.

The makeshift classroom extension at Lochview School

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Spring 2019

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Trustees’ visit: a personal reflection Trustees David Brown and Lee Taylor spent a month in Bulawayo in late January/February this year, visiting the schools and young people we support, and the peacebuilding activities. Reflecting on the visit, David Brown writes, “How are things in Zimbabwe?”. It’s a reasonable question. To explain why we spend so much money and effort on the schools meals scheme, I tell a teacher friend that many of the children arrive at school hungry and that doesn’t make for a good day’s learning experience. When she tells me, correctly, that happens in the UK, the conversation gets harder - the difference between the two situations is not easy to relate without appearing to belittle the difficulties many people have here. In Zimbabwe there are a large number of children who are persistently hungry, have few more possessions than the clothes they wear, and in many cases that does not include shoes. As I write this, I see a jar of pencils on the desk; reliably having just one pencil per child is an aspiration in the schools we support. If my pencils weren’t there I could write my to-do list on my phone, for the children not to have one pencil each means they cannot learn to write or draw. The shortage of classrooms and furniture means overcrowded rooms; when it’s not raining the children can sit outside on the floor to ease the pressure inside but neither situation is good. We’ve decided to support the building of some new simple but robust classrooms and launch an appeal to buy new chairs and desks, which will make a big difference.

Friends’ enquiries have been prompted by the news of widespread disorder and looting the week before we travelled to Zimbabwe. I tried to reassure them that our personal safety was unlikely to be a problem (it wasn’t). Local shops had been broken into and the contents looted, mostly in the working-class townships now graced by being called “high-density suburbs”. There’s a political angle but this newsletter is not the place for that. These are the places where most of our supported schoolchildren live. For a while, the shops where their parents buy what food they can afford were empty: buying the groceries meant a trip to town, unaffected by the disturbances. I can understand someone back home who asks why that is a problem – so they had to catch the bus? Yes, it sounds like a minor inconvenience, doesn’t it? There are no local bus services in Bulawayo. So you walk, bicycle if you

have one, or take a minibus taxi which is the main form of travelling about town. Taxi fares had just increased several-fold due to the sudden tripling of fuel prices and finding the fares was difficult in itself, but also leaves less money for the groceries themselves. The shops were being repaired and food supplies re-established but the prices of most things are rising and becoming harder to afford. To pay the increasing cost of essentials, some schools are raising the fees for children even though the collection rates are less than 25%. It’s not likely that many parents could meet an increase. Thankfully, our contributions for bursaries and school meals are funded from hard currency because the cost of the first term’s school meals has risen to between three and four times when

This two-classroom block at Ngwenyama School has taken several years to build.

David Brown telling Samathonga students about the United Kingdom

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Spring 2019

Lee Taylor and David Brown were pleased to meet three students supported by our Secondary Bursary Scheme at Matopo High School (a boarding school). Pictured above, with David Brown and our local agent Agnes Ndlovu (co-clerk of Bulawayo Quaker Meeting) are Dumolwenkosi, Dumisile and Greater. Lee also visited bursary students at two day schools in Bulawayo – Sizane and Nkete High Schools. All the students got new scientific calculators and dictionaries, and those in the fourth year were given refurbished laptops.

Succesful completers of the Cowdray Park AVP course

Secondary Bursary Scheme paid in local currency. Imagine, then, a teacher earning the equivalent of £200 per month, fixed in local currency, meeting these price rises. Then imagine (I cannot, even having seen it first hand) what that means for lower-paid workers - the going rate for a day labourer is about £3, which will not pay the O-level exam entrance fee for one subject and so buy the hope that their child will not be in the same situation one day. Having visited Zimbabwe several times now over the last twelve years, what struck me this time was not the level of deprivation, the stress of every daily task being difficult for so many, the way that some new obstacle pops up just when you might think of being on an even keel, or the way that obstacle becomes so much bigger when you cannot find even a small amount of money to ease your way over it. It’s the relentlessness of these things, which you might expect, after all this time, to turn into a poverty of aspiration. It doesn’t. That people’s spirits can be wearied is inevitable and a streak of bitterness creeps in from time to time. But the determination of the teachers, the parents serving on school councils and cooking school meals, the children themselves, and the people who look after FOH’s work on the ground month by month is not diminished. They’re even cheerful most of the time. What we try to make happen and you, dear donor, pay for, is happening.

FoH gains relief grant from Quaker Peace and Service for Peace Clubs Project

Friends of Hlekweni has been awarded a grant by QPSW to build on the growing interest amongst secondary school teachers in starting Peace Clubs in their schools. On the back page we report on an initiation day for the first five schools which was held in February. Matabeleland Peace Advocacy, of which Jeffrey Ncube (see over) is a member, has created considerable interest across Matobo District and reports that many more schools are keen to sign up. The grant from Britain Yearly Meeting will mean that FoH has the money to bring in a further ten secondary schools into the network this year. On attending an initial training day, teachers are introduced to the theory and practice of school peace clubs. Each school receives a master copy of the text book ’Creating the Peaceable School’. They also receive a taster session in conflict resolution led by members of AVP Zimbabwe. Teachers are then encouraged to attend full Alternative to violence training, again funded by FoH.

Below: members of Samathonga School Peace Club proudly wearing their Peace Club tee-shirts.

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Friends of Hlekweni UK, The Quaker Centre, 1 Oakley Gardens, Downhead Park, Milton Keynes MK15 9BH Email: info@friendsofhlekweni.org.uk; www.friendsofhlekweni.org.uk; UK registered charity no 1126598

How to send money Thank you for your continuing interest and support. You can send money in a number of ways: • by cheque made out to Friends of Hlekweni and

sent to the address below, • by bank transfer or standing order to Friends of

Hlekweni, Cooperative Bank, sort code: 08 92 99, account no: 65319891 .

Please remember to Gift Aid if you are eligible.

Jeffrey Ncube was deputy head at Samathonga Primary School, Hlekweni, when he embraced the idea, proposed by FoH trustees, of starting a Peace Club. He then took the lead in sharing his experiences when the first Peace Club Network was set up in 2016. Within a year or so, Jeffrey left to work as an advisory teacher in the Matobo District which also gave him the opportunity to talk to a large number of teachers in secondary schools about his new passion—Peace Clubs. Now he has taken up a primary headship in the district, which lies to the south of Bulawayo. At the same time, he is also a founder member of the Matabeleland Peace Advocacy (MPA) formed largely by a group of former Hlekweni residents. Several members of MPA have now been trained in the Alternatives to Violence Programme up to trainer level and, in addition, Bheki Dube, secretary of the group, has gained experience in supporting the original Peace Club network through an internship funded by Friends of Hlekweni. Jeffrey found very high levels of enthusiasm for the project and so it was that, in February, MPA, supported

Five New Secondary Peace Clubs begin

by FoH, convened an initiation day for teachers wishing to introduce peace clubs into their schools. Despite, problems with low levels of pay, resulting in many teachers going on strike around this time, teacher attendance from these five rural schools was high. Lee Taylor, who was present, described the teachers as ’as keen as mustard’. After the introductory briefing by Jeffrey Ncube and Bheki Dube, Sipho Nsimbi, co-clerk of Bulawayo Meeting, led a taster session in conflict resolution (below left). FoH funded the training, transport costs and provided Peace building textbooks for each school. It is has also funded AVPZ to run follow-up training workshops for the teachers.

Trustees were also able to meet the Peace Clubs in all the schools visited. Informal evaluation sessions brought out some interesting comments from some of the students: ‘Peace is the root of respect.’

‘I used to be a bully but that isn’t helpful.’ ‘I liked to fight, now I’m not interested in fighting.’ ‘I try to fix things like misunderstandings without using my fists’

Spring 2019

Sipho Nsimbi in front of an AVP poster

Teachers from the Matobo Secondary Schools at their induction day