zita remadzimai ngarikudzwe, rana baba zvishomanao

(may the name of the woman be uplifted, but the fathers’ only a little bit)

Zimbabwe Homeless People Federation

The office mess has become my friend. I have learned to navigate the dusty binders, the rolls of scribbled flipchart paper and the stacked piles of Environment and Urbanization journals to find almost anything I need. I have even befriended a little spider that seems to live behind the decorative rusero [1] hanging on the wall to my left.

“I forgot to tell you,”

Shamiso* is seating next to me. Almost everyone else is out on a training, and there is such silence in the office that her voice seems to come from a different world.

“Last year, after you left, I wrote my exams. I’m waiting for my results” she says. She is leaning back, her body leisurely resting on an old office chair. This is supposed to be a formal interview, but we are both so relaxed it feels anything but formal.

We have taken to each other from the start, and have shared many conversations, both personal and professional. Unlike the rest of the office, she has fallen in love with mate [2], and has now started drinking it all by herself, no pushy Argentinean behind it, pinky swear.

Shamiso is average height, average built, but in the Federation she is known as “small Shamiso” because there is another person by the same name who is bigger. Like many Zimbabweans, she sometimes wears wigs and hair pieces. Today though, her shoulder-length dreadlocks are out in the open, nothing on them except for her characteristic headband with a side knot twisted in the shape of a flower that I have come to like so much.

Shamiso is telling me about her life. She grew up in Mabelreign, in a neighborhood along Quendon Road, one of the main ways into Harare’s Central Business District (CBD) coming from the West, and the road I walk every day to the office and back home. Her life was not easy. When she was in her teens, her father left shortly after her mother had a stroke, and she was left to take care of her younger siblings.

It is sunny outside, as usual. Summer here is hot, but if there’s shade, one can hardly ever feel uncomfortable. Rains are scarce here unfortunately and climate change slaps you in the face. Draughts’ negative effects on crop growth, electricity production and water access intensify the hunger gap and make life increasingly difficult to sustain, let alone thrive.

Zimbabwe Homeless People’s Federation meeting at a borehole in Mabvuku. July 2019Photo credit: Daniela Beltrame at Dialogue on Shelter — *Zimbabwe Homeless People’s Federation meeting at a borehole in Mabvuku. July 2019*
*Photo credit: Daniela Beltrame at Dialogue on Shelter*

Shortly before having the stroke, Shamiso’s mother had joined a savings group in the Zimbabwe Homeless People’s Federation. Soon after the episode, her daughter took her place. Back in her first meetings, Shamiso learned the Federation organized itself through components. She enthusiastically joined the enumerations team. Her first counting survey was in Hatcliff, a high-density settlement located in south-east Harare. They had to go door to door, collecting information on paper forms, and then go back to the office to do manual compilation.

“It would take us a month!” she chuckles, as the old office chair squeaks under her.

Shamiso was still in her early twenties when she became one of the enumeration leaders. She trained hard. She learned GIS and how to conduct settlement focus groups, surveys and profiles. As the Federation’s abilities in data collection grew, so did hers.

“If you see me in the communities, I will never sit on a chair!” she adds, nodding emphatically.

Zimbabwe Homeless People’s Federation meeting in Mabvuku. June 2019Photo credit: Dialogue on Shelter — *Zimbabwe Homeless People’s Federation meeting in Mabvuku. June 2019*
*Photo credit: Dialogue on Shelter*

In 2013, she was selected to travel as a trainer to a meeting in a well-renowned institute in the USA. She ended up not going, however. Her US visa was denied.

“It was so stressful” she tells me, and her ‘R’ sounds so Spanish my head is confused for a second.

She got a second chance when shortly after, a similar meeting was planned in Cape Town, South Africa, one she could attend without visa issues. As she tells the story of how she shared her data collection expertise there, her posture changes. She remembers people were listening carefully.

“If you want to gather data, you have to engage the people who live there.” she says as she sits up, and I can almost feel her commanding presence in that room in Cape Town.

When she finished her presentation, a person from the US Institute approached her.

“This is super.” he said to her “We didn’t know this is how you were doing it in Africa”.

Shamiso smiles in resignation, shaking her head. She turns towards me as if she’s about to share an inside joke.

“They were labeling us as “Africa”, you know?”

Yeah, I know.

Solar energy panel and water point in Dzivarasekwa Extension. July 2019Photo credit: Daniela Beltrame at Dialogue on Shelter — *Solar energy panel and water point in Dzivarasekwa Extension. July 2019*
*Photo credit: Daniela Beltrame at Dialogue on Shelter*

[1] Winnowing basket.

[2] Traditional South American drink prepared by steeping dried leaves of yerba mate in hot water and served with a metal straw from a shared hollow calabash gourd.

How you were doing it in Africa

Beginnings New and Old

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