wfn.org | Club in Zimbabwe Gives Street Urchins a Head Start

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6-January-1999 
99007 
 
    Presbyterians' Club in Zimbabwe Gives 
    Street Urchins a Head Start 
 
    by Claudia Oldenburg 
 
HARARE, Zimbabwe - About two dozen children ranging in age from five years 
to 12, all identically attired in crisp shorts and T-shirts - many of them 
former hard-eyed beggars and thieves - raised their voices in angelic song 
for director Maury Mendenhall, a young Presbyterian mission worker. 
 
    When Mendenhall paused to introduce her visitors - my husband, General 
Assembly moderator Douglas Oldenburg, and me - the children beamed at us 
with bright eyes and broad smiles that spread from ear to ear, white teeth 
gleaming. We joined their circle and sang and clapped with them. 
 
    This was our introduction to the "Children's Club" of City Presbyterian 
Church in Harare. We were attending the Eighth Assembly of the World 
Council of Churches in the Zimbabwean capital, and our hotel was just 
across the street from City Church. We had heard about our friend Nancy 
Warlick's work with the street children of Harare, and were eager to see 
for ourselves. Nancy and her husband, Bill, were visiting in the United 
States at the time, but arrangements had been made for us to learn about 
this joint ministry of Harare's flagship church and the Presbyterian Church 
(U.S.A.). 
 
    While the children continued to sing, in English and in Shona, their 
tribal language, we spoke to Alice Chicomo, the wife of a former pastor of 
City Church, who said Nancy Warlick had started the club several years ago 
by simply gathering up a few of the dirty young kids then roaming the hard 
streets of Harare. 
 
    In the early days of the program, Nancy devoted two weekly 90-minute 
sessions to teaching  Bible stories and seeing that the children got a 
light meal of bread, fruit and milk. Chicomo, a retired schoolteacher, 
broadened the program, adding lessons in basic arithmetic and in reading 
and writing in English, the language taught in Zimbabwean public schools. 
The club now meets for three full days each week. 
 
    Most members are children of illiterate families. Some live with 
parents or other relatives, but most are children of the streets. Before 
becoming members of the Children's Club, many devoted the bulk of their 
time and energy to begging, stealing and foraging food from waste bins. 
 
    On arrival at the club, the children change from their ragged, dirty 
clothes to clean T-shirts and shorts provided for them. Sometimes they are 
taken to a nearby aquatic center where they are required to take showers 
before being permitted to swim. 
 
    When a club meeting is over, the children change back into their street 
clothes, leaving the shorts and T-shirts to be laundered for the next day. 
 
    When Chicomo confided to her hairdresser that many of the children had 
head lice, the hairdresser invited the children to come to the backyard of 
her beauty shop, where she treated them free of charge. 
 
    The goal of the Children's Club is to prepare the youngsters to attend 
regular Zimbabwean schools. When they arrive, most of the children speak 
only Shona, and cannot read or write in any language. 
 
    We were pleased to see how happy the children were as they sang and 
spoke, formed letters and numbers on lined paper, and recognized once-alien 
words. (As moderator, my husband has placed a priority on the church's 
ministry with "children at risk," and has challenged every Presbyterian 
congregation to launch one new mission for children.) 
 
    Chicomo admitted to what she called "one  small problem" - many of the 
children don't want to leave at the end of the day. 
 
    Later, Mendenhall and Max Chiqwida, the moderator of the local 
presbytery, drove us to Medford Farm, the home of about 125 older street 
children. Residents live in simple dormitories with concrete floors and 
cinder-block walls. Each stark room houses beds for four boys or four 
girls. A few of the children have additional furniture, small tables or 
benches, and many tack magazine pictures to the walls above their beds - 
badges of individuality. 
 
    The residents have the privilege of washing their clothes outside, in 
buckets carried to a cold-water spigot. Some of the girls wash the clothes 
of younger siblings. 
 
    The Medford Farm children are provided three meals a day in a cafeteria 
with wooden picnic-style tables. Much of the food - corn, cabbage, spinach, 
onions, beets and tomatoes - comes from the gardens that they help tend. 
 
    Recently-planted fruit trees - orange, lemon, avocado and mango - stand 
about three feet tall. The current residents won't be around to eat the 
fruit of these young trees, but they understand that their work - digging 
the holes and planting and tending the trees - will benefit the children 
who come later. 
 
    The aims of Medford Farm are to prepare the children for regular 
school, to work with children and parents or guardians to provide a healthy 
home life, and to help abused children survive emotional trauma. The 
principal goal is to equip these children to live full lives in an 
enlightened Zimbabwean society. 
 
    When we left Medford Farm to return to Harare, we gave a ride to 
12-year-old Rumba, who was going to an open-air market to buy the farm's 
weekly ration of bread (the gift of a Presbyterian woman in the United 
States). He would take a bus back to the farm, carrying a bulky stash of 16 
loaves. 
 
    On the way to Harare, we stopped to visit Lovemore House, a 
Presbyterian home for about a dozen boys ranging in age from 13 to 16. A 
young Zimbabwean Christian and his wife are live-in "houseparents" of the 
boys. 
 
    When a child leaves Lovemore House to return to his family home, 
Presbyterian caseworkers follow up, making sure that all school fees are 
paid, that the children's home lives are satisfactory and that they are 
progressing in school. Mendenhall brags that many of the Lovemore boys are 
making top marks in their classes. 
 
    Mendenhall also was excited about the Christmas gifts she had wrapped 
for the teen-agers - sturdy brown casual shoes.  Most of them go barefoot 
when they are not wearing the shoes that are part of their school uniforms. 
 
    Visits to the townships around Harare can be demoralizing. One 
encounters hordes of homeless children, whose collective need seems 
overwhelming. But a number of Presbyterians - Warlick, Mendenhall and 
Chicomo among them  - are using  their energies to make a difference in the 
lives of as many as they can. Thanks to them, children who have almost 
nothing are being offered a priceless something: a chance in life. 

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