Julie Wakes me
Friday, July 25th, 2008
Julie wakes me! I am usually up first but this time was slumbering hard when she roused me. I have 5 minutes to get organised before we head to the orphanage to do the animal inventory. Jules makes me coffee and by the time I get to the kitchen my toast is cooking on the frame on top of the slow combustion stove. As I eat she tells me that an email has been sent to Ezelle from the Farmers Union asking for details of all the people staying at the farm includingour nationalities, passport numbers, next of kin and blood groups. She also tells me that Ezelle has been told there are British and US troops sitting on the Northern border to help with evacuations if necessary! We don’t have much time to ponder the implications as we are soon bouncing along to the Lirhanzo children’s village with the kids in tow.
In our rented Hilux we have 16 kids and in Ezelle’s tray back she has many more. Margaret will be bringing the others from town. The children are required not only to help with the organised chaos but for photo sessions, with their animals which will be sent back to their sponsors in Australia. Last year I viewed beautiful photos of smiling Kirri, one of my own sponsored children, who finally succumbed to the HIV he had been born with about 10 months ago. Despite the hardships of farming life and the horrors that abound in this country this is one death that Ezelle still can’t talk about without tears in her eyes.
At Lirhanzo, the women that look after the goats and now sheep, (which are the latest acquisition for the children) have herded every animal into the yards. They all look so healthy compared to 2 years earlier when we were here, due to the good rains, good feed and the worming doses sent from Australia by Darwin friend, Jan Hardwick. Having started my life on a Soldiers Settler’s block in the Western District of Victoria the scene brought back such happy memories spent with my father doing much of the same.
With Ezelle firmly in charge, Endazi, one of the guardian mothers scribing, and the delightful and eloquent Petros, (an orphan waiting to start his IT studies at university once things settle) with injectable antibiotics in hand, they commence. Each animal is brought to Ezelle and systematically their ear marks are checked, rewritten if becoming worn and marked off against its owner. Then they are photographed twice to show their markings. This is very important in a country where the herding takes place in the bush and rustling of animals is common. If the animals have lambed or kidded the mother’s and babies are brought together and the new animals are earmarked, tails docked and castrated if they are male.
It is a warm winters day and as soon we are shedding layers of clothing and sweating! The cacophony of sounds from crying baby animals and bleating sheep and goats, obviously much preferring the freedom of the African veldt and the laughing children as they chase their animals even now is embedded in my brain. Billowing dust goes up our noses and into our sinuses until we were spitting dust coloured phlegm. In the end I was not only photographing and recording but catching animals with the children and pulling down undescended testacies for Ezelle so that when they were ringed the procedure would be totally effective, something that made Jules’ partner Louis wince each time it was done!
The job took most of the day and by the time we finished we were covered in dirt and stank of goats and as soon as I got home I headed for the shower. As I wandered back to the outside table under the huge mahogany tree for the ritual of afternoon tea we were told of the vehicle burnt near Chikombedzi that day which belonged to the MDC official and Christo told us that CNN news had just run a story quoting Mugabe as saying “Only God will remove me.” I think to myself when will the madness end and pray that it soon will.