Children Silent Victims Of Political Impasse

ZIMBABWE INDEPENDENT
Thursday, 04 September 2008 20:46

"COME here as a visitor and not as a spy," reads a warning sign on a rusty metal stuck on to a wooden gate at a home in Nyatondo Village in the Eastern Highlands district of Nyanga.

For a moment one hesitates to enter the homestead, not sure how they would be identified — as a visitor or as a spy.

A narrow path leads to a tiny kitchen hut that smells of fresh cow dung that has just been used as floor polish. Beside the kitchen is a neat pile of firewood. Opposite the kitchen is a two-roomed hut with a small shining verandah.

Everything at the homestead appears to be in order and one would expect to find an adult at the home. But that is not the case.

Running into the yard from the garden is a small boy dressed in a torn navy blue pair of jean shorts and a sleeveless T-shirt in the chilly weather. The boy is 14-year old Tichaona Mubako, an orphan in Ward 19 in the Sedze area of Nyanga, who has been staying by himself since the age of 12.

A Form 2 pupil at Nyajeza Secondary School, Tichaona began looking after himself after his parents succumbed to HIV and Aids-related diseases. Living by himself, doing the house chores, tilling the fields, maintaining the garden and protecting his late parents’ property has become a normal way of life for Tichaona.

"Sometimes I am scared of staying alone," Tichaona said. "When night falls, I get my friend who stays close by to come and spend the night with me, but most of the times I am by myself."
His mother passed away in 2004 while his father died two years later.

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