Roberto Bazzoni Onlus : Sebastiano Bazzoni returns from his annual site inspection trip to Zimbabwe.

Sebastiano Bazzoni returns from his annual site inspection trip to Zimbabwe.

He tells us how we have a lot of work left to do.

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The Trip:

Elaine, Julianne, Neville and I arrive in Harare at 6am on 17 May. Temperature 10 degrees, blue skies. That morning we pay our first visit to the G. Spagnolli Centre for the Promotion of Women, Harare.

Since we bought the house in Harare to create a dispensary in 2004, various other structures have been added to improve the functioning of the Centre.

A professional education centre for women; computer room and cookery room.
radiology and analysis laboratory
doctors’ cottage
storage and cold room
two staff apartments
patients' toilets and laundry.

At the Educational Centre the second course in “quilting” is underway. The teacher shows us works produced. These are very beautiful – it would be a good idea to find distribution channels for them. The mothers, once they have finished their course, receive a diploma and will have a professional qualification which should make reaching economic independence possible.

Having visited the Centre, we move on to visit the San Marcellino Village, where 56 orphans are looked after in a family environment. The Village gets by on the help of Italian support groups sourced by Carlo. The RBO covers medicine for the children who are sick with AIDS.

18 May 2006

The morning is dedicated to visiting the Luisa Guidotti Hospital (Mutoko), renewing contacts, seeing how things are proceeding. The general impression is that the structure is being maintained at a good level of efficiency but that it is an effort to face the growing demands. In fact, due to the worsening state of the national health system, patients come from very far seeking treatment. Many have gone through a long journey in discomfort. Public transport, when it works, costs so much that the average person cannot afford it.

We see various cases of patients, young (Michelle) and old (Grace) who have been saved from being very close to death and who are now on there way to healing or are already feeling better.

We also visit the nursing school, where construction work is now underway to increase the receptive capacity from 48 to 72 students. This is an achievement. A request was made for help in completing the fit-out.

Unfortunately black-outs have become the norm and last a long time. Without electricity there is no water. In order to make a phone call it is necessary to travel nearly 7 km from the hospital to where a GSM signal can be found. Obviously strange things like blackberries do not work.

19 May 2006

St. Michael's Hospital, Ngezi.

This is a general hospital situated in a fully rural area. Among other patients, there are 160 being treated for AIDS. Doctor M. Grazia Buggiani is more and more exhausted: She cannot find a doctor to help her. They haven’t had a surgeon in years. Despite these difficulties, Mariele’s House, which is dedicated to the care of orphans and disabled children is working well, just as is the department dedicated to expecting mothers. The hospital, with its limitations, represents the only point of healthcare service over a very vast area.

20 May 2006

Having greeted our friend Stewart Barr, whose logistical support of our projects is essential; we visit Dr. Wenceslas Nyamayaro in his Provincial Medical Offices. Wence also has a clinic in Chinhoyi where 80 women are currently in treatment. We agreed to increase this number to 100. Wence makes a monthly supervisory visit to St. Michael’s.

Unfortunately, we also encountered something with we have so often only read about in the press. In the morning, Carlo was informed that our dear friend Merle’s farm (800 acres) was repossessed by some local honchos (a magistrate and others), as they continue with their Land Reform Programme which was violently started in 2000. Only a few weeks ago they had taken half of her farm, now they have taken it all. Her house has not yet been invaded, however nothing is guaranteed - this could happen at any moment.

We met the farm owner who confirmed her wish to continue to fight, bringing the case to the High Court, while knowing that even in the case of a favourable judgement, it would not be applied. In fact the political party in power has announced that their political actions will not be modified by decisions of the magistrate. This happens at a time when the country is declaring to the IMF through official channels, that the expropriation of whites would stop and an effort would be made to encourage farmers to return to the country.

Land taken from whites to be redistributed to blacks, in practice is given to those in the higher echelons of the party’s hierarchy. Except in the rarest of occasions, the farm becomes a mere status symbol, leaving the bush to repossess the land and agricultural production, as well as exportation to stop.

In today’s case, 250/300 of the employees will be kept on, at a salary which will legally be reduced by 50%. In general, where the new owner has no desire to continue cultivation, the employees are simply left to the streets, losing accommodation and livelihood.

Our friend tells us that many families of their employees had lived on the farm for five generations.

Her state of distress is beyond comprehension, yet she affirms her wish to invite us to dinner “in my farm” in the future.

When situations, about which one reads in the newspaper, happen to someone known to you, they acquire a different emotive significance. We tried to comfort our friend to the best of our abilities, and affirmed our great determination to continue in the struggle.

In fact, under Mugabe’s auspices, a new ruling elite has emerged -ministers, members of parliament, party officials, senior civil servants, defence and police chiefs, select businessmen, aides and cronies- whom he allowed to engage in a scramble for property, farms and businesses, as a means of ensuring their loyalty and underpinning support for his regime One after another, state corporations -the national oil company, the national electricity supply company, the posts and telecommunications corporations- were plundered. Official inquiries into many scandals have named prominent politicians, including cabinet ministers, among the culprits, but no action was ever taken against them.

In the afternoon, at 3:00pm, a meeting of the mothers who are sick with AIDS was held at the G. Spagnolli Centre for the Promotion of Women. Many women were present with their children. During the small ceremony, there were some communications regarding new professional courses which will be on offer to the mothers. Then there was a performance representing their daily experiences of the macho culture, which hypocritically blames the daughter-in-law for the death of a son through AIDS, feigning forgetfulness that it is the promiscuity of the male which is the first cause of the diffusion of the disease.

During the ceremony, which was filmed by Neville, the air was full of emotion and involvement. These are people who have been through Hell, having gone through Operation Murambatsvina last year, when the Government destroyed the housing and livelihoods of 700,000 people (and the fatal effects can still be felt). Some have lost their husbands after having being infected and are left with their own children and the children of others who have passed on, to struggle against everything.

Thanks to the Centre, they have above all, found health, they have formed a united group which has its own voice which makes its own decisions and now is starting professional courses with the aim of helping this group to become financially independent. All this has restored their dignity and of course, they are proud of these achievements. They are grateful for the help they have received, just as we are grateful to them for these results.

There was a palpable emotion in the air.

Some of them had walked 12 kms to be there and would walk another 12 km home, in the dark. Public transport costs are so high to make them impractical for the masses, when they are working.

This reminds me of the great hopes which were pinned on the independence of the country, back in 1980. Julius Nyerere of Tanzania advised Mugabe: “You have inherited a jewel. Keep it that way”. This has not been the case.

So, in a country where things continue to slide from bad to worse, we are trying to help in any way we can as many people as we can. At present the patients under care are in excess of 1200, and we are prepared to reach the level of 1400 by the end of 2006. The “care” is no longer just confined to providing medicines, but much more as a consequence of the general conditions of the country: support for food, help in giving the women in Harare Centre professional skills to help them be financially independent, sourcing fuel, providing generators to cope with the increasing blackouts etc.

Thanks to all our supporters, these people are receiving not just help, but HOPE!

Sebastiano

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