Our typical day

Usually we wake up at 6.20 a.m. The couple who's house we are living have two dogs and we start our day by taking the dogs for a run. After jogging and swimming in the pool we have breakfast which usually includes  fresh fruits like mangoes, papayas and pineapples, toasts, eggs, yogurt and coffee.

Then we have some work to do on the computer related to society's issues. About 9 a.m we leave by car to Dzivarasekwa which is 30 km from our house. Once a week we are attending to weekly meeting with local workers and other volunteers. Now there are three other Finnish volunteer who are also sharing the house with us. When we are concentrating on children's healthcare in the society they are more involved freetime activities like piano and extra maths lessons. In the weekly meeting each of us gives a report about things that have happened during the week, in English of course. After weekly meeting we go to the activity centre to see the children who usually come there before or after their schoolday. On this day we started to do "health cards" for children which includes height, weight, allergies, and information about their possible diseases. It's a big project because there is 400 orphans and they have no previous information anywhere about their health and the most of them don't even have birth certificates. It's very hard to interview the little ones because they don't understand English and because they are so young they can't tell us their medical history by themselves. 

After lunch at the center we were visiting this lady who sells and donates chickens, eggs and potatoes to children's of society. This day she wanted to donated twenty chickens to shelter where part of children are living. 

In the afternoon we helped the other Finnish volunteers to give maths extra lessons for primary children. Especially maths is the most difficult subject for kids because maths is taught in English rather than their mother language shona. About 4 p.m we heading back to home where we have usually some works to do like move the information about healthcards to the computer. So about 5 p.m our workday is over and rest of the evening we are spending time with other girls and just relaxing for example watching a movie or going to sauna ! :) 

sadza and kapenta

Traditional food in Zimbabwe is sadza which is like white porridge made of corn. We think that it has no taste at all. But the kids seem to really like it. With sadza there is usually served some kind of meat, vegetables or very small fishes which they call kapenta. People use only their hands to eat, no spoons or forks. But we think that eating by hands is quite unhygienic and slow way to eat, so usually we ask them spoons. Dining is important part of the day for children and they spend lot of time to praying before starting to eat and they are not in hurry when it comes to time to eat. People here don't like to eat vegetables without cooking them, they think that it is weird to eat fresh salad like we do.
Children are not used to eat lot of sweets and they are very thankful when they receive for example white bread with peanut butter. Sometimes we give them some candies and they are very happy even to get one lollipop..

sadza with kapenta

Annoying things..

After three weeks, we have noticed many things in the local culture which are very different to compare what we are used to in Finland.  The first thing is time. In Finland we have used to live with clocks and calenders and plan our daily schedule by using them. Now we have understood the meaning of "zimbabwean time" which has nothing to do with finnish time.. For example if we have a meeting with local people at 2 p.m, usually after one hour we are still waiting and after calling them their usual answer is "I'll be there in five minutes" which means that we still have to wait at least half an hour. We have never heard words "Sorry I am late" after that.. This happens everywhere, for example we were visiting in the local clinic and they said that workday starts at 7.30. Of course we were there fifteen minutes earlier, but it was 8.30 when all the nurses were present and ready to listen the morning report. But we just have to deal with the fact that they are always late..

All toilets are not the same level as in Finland

The other issue which is annoying us is the trafic. The roads are in very bad condition because of the rain season but still people are driving like crazy. There are no signs or any marks on the road and you never know in which road you are driving. For tourist it is little bit difficult to drive here especially if you are not used to drive the left-hand traffic. In Zimbabwe the bus service is different than in Finland. Here the so-called buses are called "kombi" which are just ordinary vans owned by self-employed persons and of course they want to get the van as full as possible. The kombies are usually the ones who cause most of the traffic accident in Zimbabwe. So you can imagine that we were a bit scared when we were sitting inside the kombi for the first time.
Because of the bad economic situation you should have the exact change when you go to supermarket because they don't have small changes to give back. So they give you candies and lollipops instead of small changes. But is not any problem for us.. ;) 

Hospital visits

When our supervisor Ritva was visiting here we had an opportunity to visit in Chitungwiza Central Hospital which is one of the biggest hospital in Harare. This public hospital was quite different compared to Finland's hospitals. Hospital rooms were messy and there were lot of patients in the one room. There was about 400 place for patients but the number of staff was very low because of the bad salary. For example one of the doctor earns only 300 dollars a month which is about 240 euros.After touring around the hospital we were able to go to theatre. At the operating room we were able to follow four different operations, one of them was section and the woman gave birth to triplets! That was wonderfull experience to see and all of the children were healthy and happy. Aseptic in the theatre was not same level than in Finland. There were no hand sanitizer and the place for handwashing was very ancient too. The clothing of the staff were very worn and seem unhygienic. We were pretty shocked when we saw a butterfly flying above the operating table..

After visiting in the public sector we went to one of the private hospital of Harare. The difference between these two hospital was quite huge. The rooms were more modern, there was more space for patients and even the staff seemed more friendly and satisfied with their jobs. Nurses took care for the patients better than previous hospital where the patients waited many hours at the corridor, half naked in their uncomfortable looking beds, without nobody saying a word to them.

Wild is life

Today we visited place called Wild is life animal park, where part of the animals are walking free. The animals specially the antilopes were very tame and werent afraid to get closer to people. We saw lions, monkeys, giraffes, zebras, the very rare pangolin and we even had a chance to smooth the cheetah. At the end of the tour we enjoy glass of champange with strawberries at the sunset.