Zimbabwe: Patience

From Zimbabwe 2010 Photo Album

Patience is a virtue. This describes Zimbabweans. We Canadians have a plan and want to stick to it. In Zimbabwe, to wait is part of life. The children who have been promised a bedkit have taken that to heart and have shown us that waiting is what they will to do to get one. Their parents, mostly mothers, have been appreciative of the opportunity their child has been given to receive a much needed gift. For many children the wait has been long. A day without food or water is a small price to pay for the reward to be earned.

The children who are at the front of the line receive their bedkits and happily return home to set up their bedkit and I let them know that they should have a nap, just to practise sleeping on a mattress with a soft pillow covered by sheets and a warm blanket!! They beam with pride.

The children who watch this process going on from the back of the line – hundreds of bedkits away, show immense patience: quietly eyeing the process of setting up the photograph, “cheesing” for the photographer, filing past two tables to complete the confirmation of the gift that they are about to receive, and, finally having a bag filled with their bedkit items handed to them!! Sometimes the bag is bigger than the child! This is the time when the child who is close to the end continues to smile, knowing that the room full of bedkits, has one guaranteed for him/her. This process may be hours away. That is what they will do, sometime today. There is only silence and big eyes following the children ahead of them in line. No complaints. No whining. No outbursts. No tears. Just patience.

From Zimbabwe 2010 Photo Album

When I hand bedkits to children, I let them know it will be a wonderful sleep they will have tonight. I tell them to have sweet dreams, all wrapped up in their blanket, on their new mattress. To see their beaming smiles and words of thanks, after waiting all day to finally be the “one” is satisfying, and makes me proud to know I have made a difference.

Our Zim team has made a difference. Perhaps the children will dream of Canada. I told children today what our winter is like. It is winter here now. I described what downhill skiing is and how to make a snowman. Big round eyes showed their interest. I told them to dream big. They smiled and said: "Yes!!"

Sleeping Children makes dreams come true.

Sleep well, because, as of today, thousands more children in Zimbabwe will.

Ciao,

Helen Scott
for Team Zimbabwe 2010

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