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| Holding hands. Photo by Christian Martinelli |
April 1, 2011: Tariro Moyo’s four school-aged children will probably not be welcomed in their father’s household. Divorced from Moyo three years ago, he has remarried and is living in a two-room cottage with his new wife, who is not eager to take them in.
But the 38-year-old mother from rural Midlands Province in Zimbabwe doesn’t see how else her children will survive.
“I had no choice but to bring the children to their father,” she told IRIN news service. “There is so much hunger in Shurugwi, and getting food for them is a real struggle.”
Moyo hopes her former husband, who lives in a town 18 miles south of the capital, Harare, will do what he can to get the children food and schooling. “I know life will be difficult for my children, but they could have died if I had remained with them,” she said.
The reality is that her ex-husband earns a meager mechanic’s wage that is unlikely to cover school fees. The children, according to IRIN, will be expected to sell vegetables on the streets to help earn their keep.
Crop Failure Brings Destitution
Moyo cannot feed her children because of a failed corn crop on the two-acre plot her father gave her after the divorce. Drought killed this year’s harvest. Like other neighbors, she had been depending on monthly allotments of food staples from a nongovernmental organization. Those distributions, however, ended in early March because the group’s budget was depleted.
This year’s poor crop showing will leave some 1.7 million Zimbabweans in need of food assistance, according to the Famine Early Warning Systems Network.
Moyo explained that most families in her area have no cash. They survive by bartering. Her children ate only one meal a day, at night, consisting of sadza, a corn-based porridge, with vegetables. They went to school on empty stomachs. The lucky villagers, she said, are those with relatives working in urban areas who send them money every month.
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| Kids at SOS in Zimbabwe. Photo by Christine James |
SOS Children’s Villages Helps Children Like Moyo’s
Between 220,000 and 250,000 rural families in Zimbabwe live in extreme poverty and are in a deep food crisis, according to a joint report by UNICEF and the Zimbabwean government. Among these households are 620,000 to 700,000 children. Like Moyo’s four children, they are highly vulnerable to a life of destitution.
SOS Children’s Villages, in Zimbabwe since the early 1980s, provides loving homes and full stomachs to some of that nation’s 3.5 million poor children. Through its three SOS Children’s Villages and a host of schools, social programs, and an agricultural training center, SOS is providing hope to children who would otherwise have none.
You can be a part of creating these loving homes for children in need by becoming a Global Village Builder. For as little as $12 per month, you can provide the essentials of life to children like Moyo's and help keep them off the streets.
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