Aaron did an interview with David over at DPRadio this afternoon, and that’s online now at DPRadio. Check it out!

I mentioned this group and the International Day of Prayer to people in an email at the beginning of this week and I had replies from people back home in Zim who said it made them cry, but also gave them hope and encouragement to know that others around the world are praying for their plight and that they are not alone! So thank you to everyone and keep praying!

- Katy

© Duane W. Udd: 6th July, 2001 | DOWNLOAD

Through dark hours of lengthy labour
Pangs increase intensity
Husband family friend or neighbour
Need to know their frequency

Suffering should shed its silence
Angst or anguish should be shared
To end all needless violence
Minds like bodies may be bared

Shame despised as joy beyond it
Helps us to endure our cross
Hope and patience have great merit
Even in the face of loss

Barrenness will be behind us
Fruitful years stretch far ahead
Though for now we face a huge fuss
New life will spring forth instead

From the Source of all creation
Flows our creativity
Giving birth brings great elation
Like our Lord’s Nativity

Kings like Herod still may threaten
Till God terminates their terms
Causes now seem so uncertain
Hateful Herod died of worms

God will still preserve our offspring
They will rise to call us blest
Faith must be our mighty mainspring
Through travail or trial and test

Angels need make no announcement
Labour bears laughter and mirth
Strong Zim women make pronouncement
Of Zimbabwe’s bright rebirth

The hospital is crowded…overcrowded in fact. Each bed filled, and the open spot on the floor beside that bed also filled with a patient. Resources are stretched extremely thin…often 1 nurse per 40 patients, and 1 Doctor per 100 patients. Outpatients arrive at 7:00am, and often don’t get seen at all the first day. They sleep outside and return again the following day, now closer to the front of the line. Often the journey to the hospital is 2 days or more, yet still they wait patiently.

Not a complaint is heard. No one demands faster service. No one cuts in line. There is a certain understanding among them. An understanding and acceptance that the hospital staff is doing the best they can, and that they are here to help the patients. An understanding that others have needs also, and that the world does not revolve around their own schedule. I admire the Shona people for that.

Many have almost no money, unable to even pay for food, but still they bring what they have to pay for their medical care. Knowing full well that even if they could not pay a single dollar towards their bill, they would still be treated, they voluntarily pay.

To an outsider, the Zimbabwe situation seems hopeless. HIV/AIDS is rampant, tearing apart families and communities like a plague. Hundreds of thousands of orphaned children are left with a mere child taking over as the head of household. Daily in the hospital we performed 15 or 20 HIV tests….a negative result was a rarity that was celebrated. Even in the face of sickness, suffering and death, the Shona people have hope. A ferociously strong religious culture, Christians in Zimbabwe have had their faith tested and proven. Prosperity and an easy life are not the hallmark of Christian desires. Sharing and living out their faith in Christ on a daily basis is emphasized. Responsible stewardship of what little God has given them is displayed at a level I can only imagine when I look at my American middle class brothers.

Paul knew full well what hard times were like when he wrote to the church at Philippi, saying “And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:7 NIV). I can’t think of a better example of how true this verse is applied in our world today than the faithful in Zimbabwe who recognize that their treasure not of this world, but rather reserved for them in Heaven with their Wonderful Savior.

Pray for Zimbabweans, because those without Christ truly have no hope: No hope of a better life, and no hope for eternity. Their country is in shambles, they live in poverty, and as far as they can tell, the civilized world has turned its back on them. I learned a lot in my 2 summers in Zimbabwe as a nurse at the mission hospital. This experience showed me what was really important, and what I can do to help those in need. I pray that you take the Zimbabwe cause to heart, and commit to pray and help in whatever way possible.

1. Pray
2. Organize an event in your city
3. Get this info out to everyone in your address book.
4. Send invites to your friends
5. Join the Facebook group and share this website with your friends [use the Facebook Share button on the right]

GIFT PHIRI
The Zimbabwean: February 15, 2007
HARARE - “Are you not ashamed of yourself? Your own grand daughter!? What do you expect that child to call you, ha?” Chitungwiza regional magistrate Temba Kuwanda quizzes a 59-year old man he has just convicted of raping his 12-year old granddaughter, prodding him to justify his actions.

“Well your honour, this girl is not exactly my own direct child but is my granddaughter’s child…”

“Shut up!” magistrate Kuwanda interjects angrily. “That child is as good as your own child. What is the difference between her and your own daughter, ha?”

“Well, because she was born by my granddaughter,” the man argues, pleading with the magistrate to hand down a lighter sentence.

Confounded by the man’s actions, magistrate Kuwanda jails the man for 12 years.
At the Rotten Row Court, magistrate William Bhila shakes his head in disbelief.

“How can you be intimate with a two-year old child? What is wrong with you?”

“I was told by a witch doctor that it could cure AIDS,” replies the 36-year old man, to which magistrate Bhila, visibly angry, retorts: “I will have to send you to prison. You have also infected that poor thing with AIDS. I am sentencing you to 24 years in prison.”

These are just two of the 2,000 reported rape cases involving children as young as three months old brought before the courts last year in Zimbabwe, which the authorities and civic groups believe is a mere tip of the iceberg.

Child sexual abuse is on the increase in the country, a phenomenon the southern African nation is deeply divided over its cause and how to handle it.

In most of the cases, the children are raped by relatives in whose custody they would have been entrusted, making the abuse difficult to detect.

But most worrying to the authorities and women pressure groups is the emerging trend in which the crime is increasingly being committed by people advised by witch doctors to rape a minor to be cured of illnesses not responding to treatment.

The belief among the rapists and witch doctors is that the sexual purity of a young girl’s soul and body has medicinal value, and in some cases, the crime is committed in the belief it would bring luck.

The result has been devastating to both the victims and their parents. Many of the children raped are infected with sexually transmitted diseases, including AIDS.

Studies show as much as 70 percent of child rape victims in Zimbabwe are infected with a sexually transmitted disease of one form or another. Estimates indicated that among 3,000 people who succumb weekly to AIDS in the country, 30 percent are children who would have suffered sexual abuse.

Delays in detecting child sexual abuse, because of the home environment in which most of the rape cases occur, make the victims particularly vulnerable to disease infections.
A pressure group, Child and Law Project, estimates that most of the rape cases only come to light after one year, if the victim does not suffer immediate physical harm or disease infection from the abuse.

Other studies indicate child sexual abuse cases are so widespread in the country that most girls in Zimbabwe were becoming sexually active at the age of eight, which is just half the country’s legal age of consent.

A commission of inquiry set up by President Robert Mugabe two years ago found most young girls lived under the constant threat of sexual abuse, and suggested stringent laws to protect the children.

“Such a development (growing child sexual abuse) is of great concern because of the risk of these children contracting STIs (Sexually Transmitted Infections) and HIV,” said the commission in its report.

But the nation is still unsure, despite the various studies on child sexual abuse, of the exact causes of the increase in the number of rape cases involving minors which occur even in remote corners of the country.

While court evidence from child rape cases point to a growing involvement of witch doctors in the crimes, the traditional healers argue instead that the expanding influence of Western culture was the main culprit.

Handson Gwindi, research and education officer at the Zimbabwe National Traditional Healers’ Association (ZINATHA), admits some members of his group advised their clients to sleep with young girls for medicinal purposes, but said the majority of rape cases involved people influenced by Western culture.

“There are people who are told to sleep with young children for various reasons such as to make money. This is done by people using bad medicine,” he said.

“The other reason for the increase is because of migration. The things we are seeing today are foreign - they are not African. Our culture does not allow us to sleep with our children or even to look at them with sexual thoughts. Westernisation has destroyed our culture,” he added.

But women pressure groups say the crime is becoming prevalent because of sentences passed by the courts on offenders were not stiff enough to deter people from child sexual abuse.

They are advocating death sentences for rape offenders, or better still castration, two possible punishment forms which they feel would be proportional to the gravity of the crime and also serve as a sufficient deterrent.

“We should not look at the sentences, but the purpose of passing the sentences. Castration should be considered in rape cases so that you remove the problem permanently,” said a researcher with the Girl Child Network.

© Duane W. Udd: 6th July, 2001 | DOWNLOAD

Sovereign Lord of all creation
Hear this poor Zim woman’s prayer
Heal our wounded bleeding nation
By Your tender loving care

Sons and fathers still are dying
Though they say our land is free
Put an end to greed and lying
For these things ought not to be

Grant us leaders with great vision
Who will see beyond their wants
Nations hold us in derision
When our laws a leader flaunts

Many people now are starving
Food alone won’t meet their needs
Whilst fine farmlands endure carving
Some young girls wear widows’ weeds

Violence in every region
Is the order of the day
Stressful symptoms now are legion
Even doctors fly away

Truth and fiction mingle freely
Till most minds become confused
Wondering what matters really
When our media’s abused

Give us hope beyond all hoping
Faith to work with joy and love
Helping those who are not coping
With Your wisdom from above

Lord in mercy hear our heart’s cry
Only by Your grace we stand
May Zimbabwe live and not die
Father come and heal our land