By Rex Mphisa
Picture a village where every child is in school.
A village where the community combs all school registers taking stock of the whereabouts of all immediate past primary school students to take them back if they dropped out of school prematurely.
The villagers’ action to re-enrol back to school is indiscriminate and they even follow up those in child marriages or who left due to childhood pregnancies in a determined mission to prioritise education.
In that motion, the villagers collectively knock doors at every family home, picking all idle children to re-rail their education.
This is a village where a community, just to make education for the young possible and a priority, build affordable accommodation at distant schools to reduce distances of up to 20 kilometres children trudge daily to school.
That village seems like one from a fairy tale folklore magazine and imagined stories of Zorro and their myths.
Yet in reality this is the situation in Beitbridge East, resulting from milestones achieved through HIV/Aids interventions by the National Aids Council of Zimbabwe.
Here, under Chief Matibe, the villagers have not only accepted the “Not in My Village” theme, a community-driven campaign in Zimbabwe launched by NAC, but are living it.
“Not in my village is our own prayer and hymn. Its the bible of how we view and value the education of our children. It is more interesting that we speak it in our own Venda and Pfumbi languages. Venda is now taught in schools and children understand it so our message is easy to drive,” senior village head Nguluvhe said.
“We have broadened not in my village to fight child marriages and and early sexual activity. We are tackling this as a community. Its collective effort and because everyone is part, you will hear from different community leaders with different tasks,” he said.
He was making welcome remarks to journalists and executives of NAC on a week-long tour of Matobo and Beitbridge districts HIV/Aids interventions expected to rid Zimbabwe of new infections by 2030.
NAC implements comprehensive, multi-sectoral HIV/AIDS intervention projects across the country to achieve the national goal of ending AIDS as a public health threat by 2030.
The organisation’s key projects and models include adolescent girls/young women’s Sista2sista and Brother2Brother for young men to build life skills, spread knowledge, and provide sexual and reproductive health (SRH) services.
There is peer-led behavioral interventions, gender-based violence (GBV) prevention, condom distribution, and access to pre-exposure projects as well.
But it is Not In My Village that has taken root in Chief Matibe’s are comprising several villages and three headmen.
“As the leader of these people, I brought the knowledge after we were trained in Gweru as traditional leaders. We were educated against child early sexual activities and marriages and after that I told my people through headmen and village heads that we will not accept child marriages again in this area,” Chief Matibe said.
To drive home the message, NAC partners traditional leadership to address undesirable HIV/AIDS, child marriages, and gender-based violence.
Chiefs, in rural lives, are custodians of cultural norms and enforce NAC grassroots behavioural change through community-led programs.
“Here its Not In My Village, Not In My Church, Not In My Area, Not In My School as we have taken this fight seriously. We cannot have goats think better than us because they wait for their females to mature,” another senior village head Happison Shoko said.
Nicholas Ndou, who is the chairperson of the Not In My Village campaign in Chief Matibe’s area said close to 100 children have since been taken back to school.
“The community helps source material for the children if fees are an in issue and several children even those who abandoned school years ago are now in class,” said Ndou.
The villagers most significant approach is local criminalising of child marriages and all families involved in the act are fined heavily at traditional courts.
“We target the intermediary who facilitates child marriages, we then go hard against the offending families who are fined up to three beasts. This is a deterrent and it will work for us as we say Not In My Village against child marriages,” kraal head Jeremiah Mbedzi said.
NAC campaigns in the area have gained momentum with the widened approach, the zeal and enthusiasm amongst the beneficiary communities themselves.
Villagers believe their fight will change the outlook of the future for their children with the foundations they lay today.
“Yes, where there is a will, there is a way. We all determined,” said Village Health Worker Takalani Shoko who is actively involved