By Dennis Gaboury | Founder, Chair, Board of Trustees
In most of our updates, Zimkids Orphan Trust attempts to provide you with an overview of our work and the progress we’re making. But we realized that it might be useful for you to understand a bit more about the immense challenges we face in keeping our young people healthy. So let me tell you the story of two brothers, Pritchard, 14, and Praymore, 11, who recently joined us.
The father of the two boys died of complications from HIV/AIDS, and their mother, with no means of support, quickly remarried. Unwilling to tell her new husband that both she and her sons were HIV positive, she threw away hers and the boys’ medication lest he find it and realized that he’d been deceived. Within months, she was dead and both boys were extremely ill.
They were taken in by their grandmother in a rural village, and she sent them to herd cattle despite their conditions. Their other grandmother in town, who is HIV positive herself and already had three other orphaned children living with her, rescued them. After installing them in her home, she promptly brought them to Zimkids. For the first month, they were so weak and so traumatized that they could barely manage a smile. So malnourished their growth is stunted.
We took them to the hospital and got them on regular anti-virals. And we provide the grandmother with food, clothing and school fees for herself and the children in her care. Praymore has perked up considerably, but with Pritchard, things remain touch and go as he has enormous difficulties keeping down food. Our physician, Sashka Maksimovich, is watching over him. But we’re bracing ourselves for the possibility that he’s simply too weak to thrive.
I wish I could tell you that this story is unusual, but, sadly, it speaks volumes about daily life in Zimbabwe, about how its children are all too often seen as something to be put to use, about its warm hearts without resources, about its poverty, and its appalling lack of health care.
We struggle to keep our children both safe and healthy. Our staff – and all of our older children – watch carefully to see who is growing and who is not, who suddenly lacks energy and who is zooming across the soccer field. When children don’t show up at our Centre, staff members call or stop by to check on them. We feed the young 'uns at the Centre and provide extra food to the undernourished, most often onsite lest their relatives grab what we give them. And Dr. Maksimovich is their steady champion, always there when something unexpected occurs or when the public health system fails them, as it so often does.
Despite our best efforts, over the past 10 years, we have been forced to bury three of our own. With each funeral, we rededicate ourselves, vowing – hoping – NEVER AGAIN.
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