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Welcome to Gokwe, at the edge of the Zambezi Valley

sandyelsworth

The new Holy Cross Secondary School at Gokwe
The new Holy Cross Secondary School at Gokwe

The large market town of Gokwe is located at the top of the Zambezi Valley escarpment, about 2 hours drive west of Kwekwe. We reached the town at about 10am, enjoying the reasonably predictable potholed road, with occasional police roadblocks. It seems the police are on the prowl for particularly ancient vehicles, likely to be unroadworthy, or heavily overloaded. After a quiet backhander of $5 or $10 the taxi or decrepit wreck can happily continue its journey … until the next roadblock, and so it continues, and everyone is happy.

Most people survive through informal trading
Most people survive through informal trading

We were welcomed at the brand new Holy Cross Secondary School by the Head Teacher, Rural dean, and a number of other dignitaries as usual … and 130 boys and girls. The two brightly painted orange buildings stood out proudly in the heat of the summer sun. The second pair of classrooms are still in the process of being plastered and rendered, so all the students were pbeing taught in the completed classrooms. The office of the headteacher was a small room crowded with bags of cement, sand, pipes and fittings and other building materials. I might have made some poor comment about how great the setup was for technical training of the students! Probably not the best attempt at humour.


Currently, water in Gokwe is having to be purchased by the school and others from tankers at US$15 per cubic metre. Makes a stark comparison with my home in Kent where I pay £2.50 (about US$3) for clean treated water to my house. It is widely recognised that not only do the most vulnerable communities pay more for clean water than First World counties, but far higher as a proportion of their income. And that’s before we talk about waste water.


As always, at every site, I tell the story of the borehole at Rangemore, Bulawayo. Here the church was getting frustrated at the community using the water and decided to lock the community tap. The following day the priest came in to discover that members of the local community had knocked the tank off the stand. It is the only case of vandalism we have recorded, and is directly due to locking the local community out of access to the water.


Each of these boreholes and solar installs is provided to the benefit of the school, church, orphanage, etc, but just as important is that a tap is provided for local usage. This abundance of water, freely bestowed, like God’s grace, is for everyone, not purely for the Anglican communion. Fortunately, this principle is widely acknowledged with the nodding of heads and murmurs of assent.


The school has only been allowed to open now because of the provision of the borehole. Apparently, it is a requirement for all new schools to have their own water supplies. The plan is to grow the school to about 160 students and to expand to provide boarding as well in the future. It is certainly needed in this area with a shortage of educational facilities.

The students were brought out to have photos taken, and I was suddenly thrust into the stage, well, a sandpit really, to make a short speech. Surrounded by bright blue uniforms and watchful eyes, I picked up a local rock. Anyone who knows me, knows how I love to talk about rocks! I could see them frowning, trying to work out why this Murungu was holding a stone as if it was a precious gold object, and what on earth was he going on about! So, basically normal reactions  to my ramblings about the Mystery of the Earth and Stories the Rocks Tell us.


Then back to classrooms for the students, a cup of tea, some bread and eggs for us before we leave for our next leg of the trip: down the escarpment into the Zambezi Valley, to a village which doesn’t even feature on any map I could find. And would the main road be usable without a 4 Wheel Drive vehicle across the rivers following the recent rains, or should we take a 3 and a half hour detour.


Thanks for reading and your support.


Sandy Elsworth     25 January 2025.

 

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