COVID19: Masks, Milestones and Lessons in Resilience

When COVID-19 came to Zimbabwe and the country’s schools closed down, Maureen Sigauke joined forces with other families in her low-income neighbourhood in Kwekwe in heart of the country’s mining district. Together, they pooled their resources to set up a collective home-schooling initiative for the community’s children. In this update, Maureen looks back — and ahead.

Six weeks have flown by. What started as the hope that, during Zimbabwe’s COVID-19 schools closure, we could somehow provide replacement classes for 38 children of primary and secondary school-going age in my working-class neighbourhood in Kwekwe has grown beyond expectations.

On Friday 19 June, we celebrated the enrolment of our 100th schoolchild. Looking back, I will admit that it has been a tumultuous journey, emotionally charged and physically demanding. The ugly truths of poverty and inequalities have been laid bare, and areas that urgently need interventions have been placed in the spotlight. But through it all, never have I been prouder of being part of this small Mbizo 7 community. Together we have defied odds, learned from our collective endeavours, and strengthened our resolve to continue being the hope our community needs.

As Zimbabwe, like many other countries, begins to ease the lockdowns imposed during the pandemic, we who make up the community of parents and guardians of children who have been part of our home-schooling initiative are showing no signs of slowing down or lessening our resolve. The lockdown has shown us that there are deeper-seated educational inequalities directly related to the socio-economic and political failure our country continues to face. In a Newtonian manner, equal and directly opposite to this sad fact, the lockdown has made us realise that being impoverished does not mean being without the power to change and carve out our own positive narrative – we just work twice as hard! As we celebrate our achievements under difficult circumstances, here are some of the most important things I have learned from our home-schooling initiative.

Remembering to be humane for humanity

Our initiative began simply, with early-morning exchanges among women of the neighbourhood as we swept our yards and went about our usual chores. Brief exchanges turned into longer conversations, and one conversation sparked more. A month and a half later, we look around and see that 100 children whose families lacked the means for them to make use of the e-learning platforms used by their better-off peers are now excitedly receiving a well-rounded education delivered by committed volunteer teachers and parents. And just think: it all began with a humane practice that has defined civilisation since time immemorial… Greetings!

Before the lockdown, I realise looking back, I had forgotten to be humane as I focused on running on a relentless work treadmill. I know I am not the only person who had become over-reliant on familiar practices, and had forgotten that at the centre of all our systems are humans beings. I find myself reflecting on an article by Derek du Preez about a speech given by Nanjala Nyabola, a Kenyan writer and activist and the author of Digital Democracy, Analogue Politics, in which Nyamboa described the pandemic as humanity’s wakeup call back to what matters: humans and humanity. She believes we should think about the role of technology, participation, democracy and society in terms of a triangle. At the top, you’ve got the State, in the bottom right you’ve got the Citizen, and in the bottom left you’ve got Corporations. An ideal world would be one in which there is a healthy balance and tension between the three.

The pandemic, as Nyabola said, has served to show us that the balance between state, citizens and corporations was out of kilter. The educational inequalities my community was confronting was just one of countless symptoms to the imbalance of the global and national system. To re-centre and find the balance, we have to go back to the very foundations of civilisation. Humanity, civility, and above all understanding that everything we do should be grounded in human needs, and that it must serve and protect all people fairly and with dignity.

Time to look deeper and differently

Post COVID-19, if the world is to successfully re-centre to achieve a healthy balance and tension between systems and the human factor, new analyses and perspectives will be imperative in informing new norms, values and action. For those of us living in Mbizo 7, all we could see around us were our small dilapidated houses and the dusty and potholed roads. All we could smell was the stench of poverty and hopelessness. But the past weeks have taught us to look at ourselves differently.

It is true that Mbizo 7’s roads are still potholed and dusty. The houses remain small and dilapidated, and many of my community members continue to live in abject poverty. But what has changed is that we now see further and deeper than the inequalities and limitations we endure. We now see the human capital that we have all around us. We see the energy and skills of our young people. We see the phenomenal women, as Maya Angelou calls them, whose passion, care and resilience has held many a crumbling community and nation together, and the men who sweat and toil for their families and who are tireless in their determination to provide. We are just as blessed by our collective determination as we are neglected by the system. Looking ahead, I believe we will choose to look deeper and differently, and work with renewed vigour to work for positive change.

Building our own solutions with support and solidarity

As we anticipated when we began our home-schooling initiative, some 90% of the children of school-going age in our community did not even have textbooks. Few families could afford private lessons or e-learning. As we gained commitments from qualified teachers in the neighbourhood who generously volunteered their time and expertise, we knew needed spaces and the resources to ensure that they were safe in accordance with World Health Organisation and national regulations. We needed teaching supplies, and we needed safe spaces to conduct classes.

All of this, I am proud to say, we have achieved. We now have at least one set of textbooks per grade, and socially distanced small classrooms set up in spare rooms in local homes. None of this would have been possible without the support of friends, families and well-wishers living locally, nationally and internationally. Beyond the material resourcing, I and my community have received invaluable care and emotional support that has helped us to weather the turmoil that comes with community organising. Looking past the pandemic, I know that the solidarity and care networks we fostered during this crisis need to be nurtured and embedded as critical components of all human- centred systems.

Here’s to tomorrow: the future is young!

The greatest insight we have drawn from this project has been the reminder that the future is, and has always been, young. In the case of Zimbabwe, where courageous generations have lost so much to socio-economic and political decay, the hope for a different Zimbabwe and a different world lies in the younger generations. Hope for a transformed leadership that is by the people for the people rests with the young. And hope for inclusive cultures built on equal access and participation can be seen in the faces of our children. We know now, even more than we did before, that communities and nations must invest in equal, inclusive, affordable, quality and well-rounded education for all children.

As we continue to celebrate the milestone that the families of Mbizo 7 have achieved as a community thus far, with the help of so many friends, we look forward to many more milestones on the road to transforming the lives of our children through well-rounded education and support.

Transforming attitudes and behaviour is always hard, slow, taxing work. But as I look around our neighbourhood, I know more than ever that it is possible.

The views expressed in this post are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of the Atlantic Fellows for Social and Economic Equity programme, the International Inequalities Institute, or the London School of Economics and Political Science.