Image credit: Kim Wolhuter/Veolia Environnement Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2012

Take bread away from me, if you wish,
take air away, but
do not take from me your laughter.
- Pablo Neruda

I recently interviewed the energetic and vivacious Chenaimoyo Mudede co-founder of With Love Foundation, a dynamic organization dedicated to helping those less fortunate.

Background and Objectives
With Love Foundation is a charity organization, which came into existence in 2012 and has been operating for the past seven months. After getting education and exposure to different cultures overseas, the organization’s founders came back to Zimbabwe and realized that the country is living in a selfish generation where people are not willing to share with the less privileged or dedicate time for voluntary activities. Driven by the passion of improving the quality of life and bridging the gap between communities and the marginalised members of the society, With Love Foundation is a collective idea, which is mainly driven by young people, mostly women, with the ambition of building better communities. The foundation aspires to make a difference in Zimbabwean society through engaging ordinary people in voluntary work. With Love mainly runs three programmes in Harare namely the Soup Kitchen, Zim Clean and One Million Pieces in various areas in Harare.

Programmes
Under its Soup Kitchen programme the organization receives donations of cabbages and mealie-meal from local farmers, which they distribute to the disadvantaged. Assisted by volunteers, the Soup Kitchen runs every Tuesday in Mbare and it provides hot meals to orphans and the less fortunate. So far the organization has been working with the Lutheran Church in Mbare to implement the programme while Childline also chips in identifying the marginalised children.

In order to complement efforts by City of Harare in trying to return the sunshine status of the city, With Love engages in a once a month initiative under the banner of Zim Clean to clean Harare’s streets. Volunteers dedicate their time for this worthy cause, which has received commendable support from the corporate sector in the form of cleaning materials. The organization has also received support from the Zimbabwe National Army and the Mayor’s office

One Million Pieces is such an initiative packaged to address some of the economic challenges being faced by the elderly and orphans. Items of clothing from donations from well wishers are distributed to orphanages and old people’s homes in the country.

Highlights and Future Plans
Recently With Love Foundation hosted the L.O.V.E Funfest aimed at raising funds and donations for the less privileged. Before the end of the year the organization is planning on spreading love through hosting a charity dinner and a Christmas party for children at Stoddart Hall in Mbare.

An alert from Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights:

HIV/AIDS ACTIVIST ARRESTED AT COPAC CONFERENCE

POLICE on Monday 22 October arrested Douglas Muzanenhamo, a Zimbabwean Aids activist for distributing constitutional material at the ongoing Constitution Select Committee (COPAC)’s Second All Stakeholders conference.

The arrest took place after some delegates at the conference asked Muzanenhamo for copies of the Working Peoples Red Amendments to the COPAC Draft Constitution prepared by trade unionists, constitutional reform activists, women’s organisations, students and HIV/AIDS activists in October 2012 under the Working People’s Constitutional Convention.

Muzanenhamo was immediately taken into custody and the police intend to charge him with Inciting Public Violence.

In September 2012, Muzanenhamo filed a landmark case in the Supreme Court challenging the denial of anti-retroviral drugs to suspects in police cells. His case was based on the horrendous treatment he received when he was arrested in February 2011 and charged with treason together with 45 other human rights activists including University of Zimbabwe lecturer and ISO leader Munyaradzi Gwisai, where he was denied his medication.

Tawanda Zhuwarara, a senior lawyer with Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights, who is representing Muzanenhamo, is working towards his release and making contingency arrangements to ensure that he is not denied his medication once again as happened in 2011.

On Saturday we held a memorial celebration of the life Nola Kate Reeler
Tony’s mother, who left us 2 weeks ago at the age of 87.

Her hand is one of the oldest Elijah and Daniel – her 2 great grandsons – will ever hold

Who was the oldest hand she ever held?
her Huguenot grandparents?
who left their grandparents in Europe
to come and grow grapes on the other side of the world?

What stories this hand has lived through
from her Afrikaner childhood in the Cape
to a home she and her husband made in a newly developing Rhodesia 60 years ago

A home which held the lives of her 3 children
her neighbours and friends and all of their children
members of the Benevolent Helping Hand, the Citizens Advice Bureau, the Legal Aid Clinic
her political allies in her fight against Ian Smiths ‘illegal regime’
her dinners and celebrations,
the Easter Bunny and Father Christmas

The home she only left only a week before she died

On Saturday her children, and the children of her friends, and the friends of her children
whose lives she had touched
met in her home and spoke of the part she played in their growing
and her grandchildren spoke of the magic she had brought to theirs
weaving together the different threads this grand old lady
had loved, challenged, educated, inspired into being
and fed with her wonderful cooking

Three more of her great grandchildren will be born within the next 5 months

One day these new, innocent  young hands
will be the oldest hands a new life will touch
and their story – threaded together with all the stories that came before them
their light and dark,
the changes and challenges,
the love and laughter
will hold the continuum of our lives

tiny hands holding old fingers
carrying stories that touch through time

Some excellent suggestions from Combined Harare Residents Association (CHRA):

1. The government of Zimbabwe should take the responsibility and acknowledge the incapacitation inspired by the underfunding of local authorities and declare the water issue as a national crisis. This will definitely bring on board international partners who will assist the government of Zimbabwe to mobilize funds for water infrastructure, rehabilitation and provision. The government of Zimbabwe released only 18 million for the rehabilitation of water pipes in Harare but the figures coming in from council shows us that the local authority is in need of more than USD 200 million to deal with water alone.

2. Collaboration with residents Associations in forming community water groups responsible for water conservation initiatives and education will go a long way in saving the water we have in its small quantities.

3. Construction and funding of the Kunzvi Dam water project (the Zambezi river water project for Matabeleland) will go a long way in easing pressure on the current water sources we have.