Food and Self-Reliance for AIDS Orphans

Look at this sweet smile on Della's face.  She's proud to show you her small vegetable garden.  Despite marauding monkeys and rabbits, she has managed to grow something for her family to eat.  Della has also made good use of old sacks and has potatoes growing in them as well as herbs!

Here we are now with an up and coming new herd of mums-to-be.  They were all bred in our program so we know their genes and we know that they are being innoculated, fed and well looked after until it is their time to be rehomed. With the new buck arriving, many of them will be ready to receive him and we will have yet more wild kids bringing smiles to our faces.

Our kids born in the last 6 weeks have once again shown a predominance of doelings.  So far we have 5 doelings and 3 bucklings with several more does due to birth down in the next month. Hopefully they will also produce more females to ensure a good breeding stock in the next year.

When we arrived to deliver our last 3 goats to a widower and his daughter, he was not home as he had gone to the local clinic.  His neighbor came to inform us and in conversation with her she asked us if there was a chance we could find her a wheelchair for her grandson who was 5 and had never walked.  We asked if we could meet him and discovered a young boy, Timmy, who suffers from Cerebral Palsy. We could see he was well looked after and the homestead was well kept.   Our hearts were broken as we listened to her story.  Her son had got a young girl pregnant and then ran away from his responsibilities.  Timmy had been born and when, at about 5 months, the young mother and her family discovered he was not ‘normal’ they brought him to the father’s family to raise.  Sadly, this is often what happens with illegitimate children here.  They are returned to the father’s family.  When we returned home we put out an appeal to the citizens of our city, Bulawayo, and many offers of help were received.  On investigating the situation of this small family, we discovered that they survive by doing ‘piece’ work for their neighbors, and Timmy is now too big for his grandmother to carry on her back.  Only her husband can work.  This week a pram was delivered to Timmy and we are expecting a wheelchair to come in the next few weeks.   You may wonder why I am telling you this story.  If AFCA had not partnered with us and we had not been delivering goats we probably would have never heard of Timmy!

Everyone here in Zimbabwe thanks you for your continued support of this important project.  Your generosity is making a difference in the lives of these dear children.  If you would like to learn even more about this project and others, please contact Tanya Weaver at tweaver@AFCAids.org.