Rokpa Trust Zimbabwe presents ‘The Cup’ with a talk by Rob Nairn on ‘Living Joyfully.’

Friday 14th January 2011 from 5.30pm – 8.30pm at St. George’s College Lecture Theatre (near the school church), Borrowdale Road. Movie starts at 7pm.

Entrance fee: USD10

The first evening in a planned monthly event, includes guest speaker Rob Nairn, internationally sought-after teacher on Buddhism and meditation, followed by drinks and snacks and an award winning feature film for all ages by Khyentse Norbu, a prominent Tibetan Buddhist – ‘The Cup’ : World Cup fever sweeps into a remote Himalayan monastery and centuries – old traditions are threatened – the young monks will do just about anything to watch the final match, posing a unique challenge to the venerable lamas in charge. This breakthrough debut feature film is filmed on location – with Buddhist monk actors – at Chokling Monastery, India.

94 mins, Tibetan with English subtitles.

Rob Nairn is an excellent speaker and the film is a joy to watch. A time to be inspired, entertained and an excuse to socialize. An evening not to be missed!

For more information contact Rokpa Trust at rokpa [at] zol [dot] co [dot] zw or phone Amina Zuarica at +263 4 304202

Monica Glenshaw District medical officer for Buhera, Zimbabwe: The Lancet publishes an obituary

Monica Glenshaw District medical officer for Buhera, Zimbabwe. Born on Nov 16, 1941, in Van Dyk, South Africa, she died from breast cancer in Harare, Zimbabwe, on Sept 20, 2010, aged 68 years.

Monica Glenshaw, growing up in the white enclave of a South African gold-mining village, had no idea that 90% of black Africans lived in dire poverty. But exposed as a student to the realities of life in Soweto by a Catholic women’s group that ran sewing classes in the township, her life began to take a different direction. “I knew I had a debt to pay”, she told friends a great deal later.

Recognising the immense need around her, Glenshaw embarked on medical studies and a path that took her eventually, in 1985, to Murambinda Hospital in Buhera, one of the poorest provinces in Zimbabwe, where she became medical superintendent and then district medical officer as well. For 25 years she dedicated herself to saving lives and improving the health care of the people of the region while pioneering programmes for HIV care in Murambinda that were later rolled out across Zimbabwe. Murambinda became a model for rural health care, in defiance of restricted funds and a tense political situation.

“She really was a very impressive person and I am sure the community in Buhera will miss her terribly. She will be impossible to replace”, said Professor David Sanders, director of the public health programme at the University the Western Cape, adding that “DMOs like her are perhaps the most skilled of all medical practitioners and far too little importance is accorded to training and supporting such people.”

Glenshaw set herself to improve the standards of care across Buhera, installing running water in outlying clinics and using World Bank funds offered for upgrading one hospital in each province to improve both Murambinda and Birchenough Bridge as well. At Murambinda, which she ran in close partnership with matron Sister Barbara Armstrong of the Little Company of Mary, she introduced a nurses’ training school, which now makes a substantial contribution to the training of nurses in Zimbabwe.

In the early 1990s, with no treatment for patients with AIDS, both hospitals developed home-based care programmes under Glenshaw’s guidance. In 2001, she introduced a pioneering programme to prevent mother-to-child transmission of HIV, run by a young physician colleague, Anna Miller, and with support from the University of Bordeaux in France and the Elizabeth Glaser Paediatric AIDS Foundation in the USA. “The programme proved that prevention could succeed in a resource poor setting in rural Africa-something which had previously been in doubt in academic health circles”, wrote Miller. Glenshaw also forged partnerships with Médecins Sans Frontières and TB Alert. “There is nothing heroic in treating TB”, said Glenshaw. “But we can cure it, and although 50% of the TB patients we see are HIV-positive you can make a real difference to their lives. Un-combated, TB will accelerate the devastation of the AIDS epidemic. But you can treat it. There’s no substitute for just going on, patiently, doggedly, doing it properly.”

Glenshaw was the third child of a gold assayer and his wife. She had wanted to become a vet, but her school grades were not good enough, so she did a 2-year diploma in agricultural studies. Her brother Peter told her she could do something better with her life and introduced her to a Catholic women’s organisation called The Grail in Johannesburg, which opened her eyes to the sufferings of the black majority in her country. She took a BSc in chemistry and botany and then enrolled in the University of Witwatersrand to study medicine, where she was about 10 years older than the rest of her class. Glenshaw was clear about her destiny, choosing to do her electives not in prestigious white hospitals but in Baragwanath in Soweto, and at both Hlabisa and Nqutu in KwaZulu Natal. After a first job in Nqutu, she went to work in Zambia for some years, appalled by South African apartheid. She returned to South Africa in 1979 but left 2 years later for a job with Oxfam in Mutare, Zimbabwe.

By 1985, when she applied for the job at Murambinda, she was ready to settle for good. “A whole section of your brain rests”, she said. “All the questions of ‘What am I going to do next?’ are quietened and you can think of other things.” Glenshaw was a dedicated doctor, but her friends also talk of her zest for life-her love of the arts and literature and gardening but also of a party, a drink, and her Jack Russell pup, Nutu, from whom she was inseparable.

Sarah Boseley

And in Harare, the late Dr Glenshaw is given the Lynde Francis Award:

The United States Government, through the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), will host the 10th annual Auxillia Chimusoro Awards Ceremony in Zimbabwe.  The Auxillia Chimusoro awards honor individuals or organizations that have excelled in their involvement in the fight against HIV and AIDS in Zimbabwe.  The awards are given to individuals who have demonstrated substantial contributions in communication, leadership, social investment and any outstanding works that have made a remarkable impact in Zimbabwean society in mitigating the effects and impact of HIV and AIDS.

The awards are named after Auxillia Chimusoro, one of the first individuals to disclose their HIV positive status in Zimbabwe.  In spite of the significant social stigma attached to HIV and AIDS at that time, Chimusoro publicly disclosed her HIV positive status in 1989 to promote greater awareness and to help change behaviors that increase the risk of infection.     Auxillia founded Batanai HIV/AIDS Support Group in 1992 and was one of the founders of the Zimbabwe National Network of People Living with HIV/AIDS.  She also worked with several support groups before her death in June 1998.

This year, a new award category has been added in honor of Lynde Francis, a tireless HIV/AIDS advocate who recently succumbed to the disease.  The Lynde Francis award is given to a deserving individual or institution whose actions have made a remarkable impact on the course of the epidemic in Zimbabwe.

The first recipient of the Lynde Francis award is the late Dr. Monica Glenshaw, former District Medical Officer for Manicaland and Superintendent of Murambinda Hospital for 30 years. The winner of the Communication Award is Catherine Murombedzi, the first journalist in Zimbabwe to publicly reveal her positive status.  Dr. Owen Mugurungi of the Ministry of Health and Child Welfare won the Leadership award in recognition of his outstanding leadership within the national programme to fight HIV/AIDS.  The winner of the Social Investment Award is Africaid, which runs the Zvandiri HIV Programme for adolescents.

Since 2000, the United States government has invested over $245 million in Zimbabwe’s fight against HIV/AIDS.  U.S. plans for HIV/AIDS assistance to Zimbabwe calls for an increase of $10 million in 2011, bringing the total annual U.S. investment in fighting HIV/AIDS in Zimbabwe to around $57 million.   Part of this plan for increased assistance is to raise U.S. support for anti-retroviral drugs from an amount sufficient for 60,000 Zimbabwean AIDS patients in 2010 to 80,000 next year.

“We share a common vision for Zimbabwe’s tomorrow – a future where there are far fewer people contracting the HIV virus and where everyone in need has access to AIDS treatment. We congratulate all the Auxillia Chimusoro awardees for their outstanding contributions,” said American Ambassador  Charles Ray.

Karen Freeman, Director of USAID in Zimbabwe, added, “USAID is proud to have been a sponsor of the Chimusoro awards over the years.  We know that, in the fight against HIV and AIDS, every individual and organization can make a difference.  USAID is an active partner in this common struggle.”

They started building their nest a month ago
soon after they arrived from Zaire

For the last few weeks
we have watched these beautiful, minute creatures
set up home outside the kitchen door
and marveled at the extraordinary investment of energy involved!

we watched as a tiny cup was built of fine grasses
spider web-stitched,
lichen-adorned
and eggs laid

Last Sunday they hatched
and the parents began to work
diving, floating flashes of orange gold
snapping invisible insects out of the air around us
feeding three, inch-long scraps of skin, bone and beak

They defended their territory with huge conviction
fearlessly attacking any passing strangers
Wednesday saw them fight off a Hammercop
(just passing through on an innocent search for pond life)
attacking him with such vigour that
despite his huge bulk,
he fell off his perch
and lost his dignity.

We saw them chasing barbets and bulbuls
bombing the bush babies as they emerged at sunset

Last week we began to notice strange white sacks
with small brown tails
floating in our pond
what new life form is this?
they seemed not to fit into any category we knew

a few days later, as we sat at the table drinking coffee
the female floated over the pond and deposited a small white sack!
she was cleaning droppings from the nest
(we learnt later that they often build nests above water)
no predator would find her chicks by looking at the ground!

Today, 10 days from hatching
3 fat feathery beings are stretching their wings
struggling and jostling to stay on board
and finally out they popped
each one seemingly as large as the nest they had left
and sat on the branch stretching into this new found freedom

they are about to fly.

what extraordinary dedication
a journey of hundreds of miles
weeks of careful camouflaged nest construction
the laying of 3 precious minute eggs
the determined effort to feed
and protect them from passing predators

3 tiny new lives
no bigger than a thumb

In her editorial for the first edition of BUWA, editor Alice Kanengoni describes a typical domestic scene: women in the kitchen preparing a meal, men in front of the television or at a table playing games. I was reminded of the funerals; weddings etc that I’ve attended where the men are either around the fire or in the house waiting for a meal, drinks, and the women are doing the work. Women themselves view their rightful places in society as being by the fire or the stove, cooking and serving.

As an adult woman, I wonder at my mother’s strength and energy in my childhood; she worked full time, just like my father did, her job was just as demanding as my fathers, and yet at the end of her work day she came home to cook, clean and help with homework. My father came home to his favourite chair, television, snacks dinner and a drink.

I remember whenever I was untidy or refused to cook, or did some other unwomanly thing she would start her reprimand with “musikana akanaka ano…” (a good girl does..). When I asked her why I had to be a good girl she would reply that it’s part of our traditions, how would I be married if I couldn’t keep house? My mother is a highly educated woman, smarter than anyone I know, and a strong willed, independent thinker.  But for her, who she is at work, and who she is at home are two different and very separate people.

In her article for BUWA, titled Contemporary African Feminism, Professor Patricia McFadden writes:

In very general terms, feminism as a radical thinking/ conceptual tradition has deliberately ruptured the boundaries of conventional, often reactionary knowledge production everywhere it has been practised, and has challenged conventional as an ideological practice, by arguing for a politics of transformation and of daily life.

She goes on to say:

Feminism is the rejection of and struggle against Patriarchy (as a system and set of structures and ideologies that privilege men and allot them various forms of power in all societies) and is also the celebration of freedom for women everywhere. As Stevi Jackson and Jackie Jones (1998) put it: ” Feminist theory seeks to analyse the conditions which shape women’s lives and to explore cultural understandings of what it means to be a woman.”

For many women in Africa, feminism is something that we practise outside our homes and our families. Our cultural understanding of womanhood is sometimes in direct conflict what we say in meetings about gender equity and social justice for women. Patriarchy is something we fight at work or in the streets.  At home not only do women accept it, they also seek to perpetuate it but granting privilege to their sons and insisting that their daughters become domesticated in the traditions of their mothers, grand mothers and great grand mothers. I think many African women, like my mother and even myself have struggled, or are struggling with the notions of being an African woman, a feminist and an African Feminist. We struggle to translate an academic concept into reality in our own lives, and often end up living two lives in compromise.

During the weekend my single girlfriends and I were discussing the perils of dating in Zimbabwe. One girlfriend said that married men propositioned her regularly at work. Others had regular girlfriends on the side. We were shocked. What happened to love and the sanctity of marriage?

Of course some men will argue that this is Africa and monogamy is a European construct, that our culture permits polygamy, that women out number men, and their millions of years old biological imperative, that should have become extinct with the Neanderthals, to populate the earth is difficult to ignore. The religious might even quote God’s “Go forth and multiply”, and who can argue with God?

Surfing the Internet a few days ago I came across a dating forum on classifieds.co.zw. Among the men and women, whose pain and loneliness was palpable in the text of their personal ads, were a few married but available men:

Married but willing to explore: am married but would want to spice my life a bit with someone similar probably share experiences and passion but just a discreet relationship no strings attached (nsa)

Lets have fun NSA period! :… I am a funny dude who loves older open minded NSA ladies, who are funny to hang out and go out with …. email or call me on weekends only

With arrogance and assumed impunity both of these have posted their names, phone numbers and even pictures. They are well educated. One even works in development, where one would assume he should be more enlightened than the average man.

Love is hard, sex is easy. But at a time when HIV/AIDS exists because no one thinks it can happen to them isn’t a no strings attached non-relationship risking too much? It’s not just men who should be held responsible its women too. It is impossible to cheat without a willing partner. The men, who propositioned my friend, knew she knew they were married. I’m sure it wasn’t the first time they had thought to have a little fun with the pretty young thing in the office, and by extension experience has taught them that it doesn’t matter, pretty young things don’t care whether they are married or not.

After two meetings with the Confederation of Zimbabwean Industries, the Ministry of Transport has agreed to postpone the effective date for implementation of SI 154 from 1 December 2010 to July 2011. The Road Traffic Regulations, amongst other things, require motorists to carry fire extinguishers and reflective triangles approved by the Standards Association of Zimbabwe.

According to The Herald, Transport, Communication and Infrastructural Development Secretary Partson Mbiriri said the regulations had been developed “after wide consultation with all stakeholders,” and that originally they had been intended to give road users 12 months notice before they took effect. But due to delays in the gazetting process, that notice period was greatly reduced – hence the postponement in the effective date.

As of yet, no one in Zimbabwe is authorised to sell SAZ approved products (one of the requirements of the regulations), and some concerns have been raised as to how fire extinguishers will fare sitting in parked vehicles in the sun, where temperatures can get to over 50 degress in the car.

More importantly, whether the regulations come into effect in December or in July next year, the larger questions remain the same – how do we trust the police, notorious for their bribe-seeking behaviour, to not simply view this as one more reason to harass drivers? In the context of Zimbabwe’s much larger problems, how relevant is an attempt to impose detailed requirements as to what I must carry in my vehicle and what specifications these items adhere to? Where does governmental involvement end and individual responsibility end – particularly in a context of authoritarian governance? Is it government’s job to require me to have a spare tyre, or is it my job as a motorist to ensure that I am looking after my vehicle – and respecting the safety of other road users?