The blue rectangle is our bigger building. On the picture you can see a few homesteads scattered about. The area is typical of rural Zimbabwe. You do not require planning permission to build anything here. You just get up in the morning and start building, as long as you own the land on which you build. This is one peck of living in the country side.
The Elmwood church has been here since the early 1950, even though the building in the picture was only completed in 2013. Elmwood, as a name, comes from the train halt on the railway line that runs to the west and parallel to the dirt road visible in the middle of the picture.
If you follow the Road going north fro the church building, you will notice that the road turns west, then north again half a km after. The reason is the presence of the Matsivo Hill that nobody wanted to drive a dirt road through. You can just about notice the white dot in the middle of the hill. It is an ordinance survey beacon. Its co-ordinates are 19 deg, 43 min, 05.18 sec South, and 30 deg, 51min, 08.01 sec, East. and is 1313 m ASL.
The climate varies from cool to hot to hotter and can be as hot as 32C. For some of us the sub-tropical climate is the only acceptable option.
Elmwood Church serves a very large and diverse community stretching more than 20 square kilometres. The church is a registered charity with responsibilities for looking after the needs of the local people and those who visit. There are other churches of different denominations, working in the same way for the same purpose. All churches work together when the need arises. The difference between established Christian churches in this environment is the details of their beliefs. Outside of that we all are interested in a healthy and stable community, and work together to support those too young or too old to or even too pressed to cope.
The current building is possibly the best building in an area of more than 100 square km. There is an argument leveled against most churches that they spend a lot of money constructing buildings that are under-used, when the money could be better spend on the actual needs of the community, for which there are many. This is a very valid argument and a lot of poor examples can be listed.
This building was donated by a generous well-wisher from Harare, and is dedicated to community service. It is designed to be as functional for that purpose as possible and it accommodates a good number of people for such as weddings, funerals, and other functions. There are plans to construct a kitchen at the site. This would help to serve food for the children and the elderly in times of drought, which happen about once every four years now.
The picture shows the Church Buildings are they are now.
This church building has taken over fifty years to get it to this standard. The first building was finished in the early 1960 and was made of poles and mud and thatched with grass. It only lasted a few years but had given the church members the confidence to try again in the mid 1970. This time they constructed a brick building with a grass roof. By the 1980s the site had a brick building with a roof of corrugated iron sheets.
In 2013 the new building replaced the old building but sits on the same spot on the site. With a little more buildings, the site will be of important service to the community.
The small building to the right of the picture above is a chapel, also completed in 2013 from another donation, is used for meeting the needs of the community children in terms of reading materials, activities, entertainment, and other services.
The site is also used by the Ministry of health as a meeting point when they want to make the community aware of health threats, such as water borne diseases, hygiene guidelines, transmittable diseases, foot and mouth disease, and other programs of community interest.
The little building in the middle of the bigger two is a latrine. The area has underlying rock at around two metres, meaning the latrine is limited in depth. Also, the latrine pit is cased with a brick wall which is not water tight. In the rainy season this could fill up with water and contaminate the water courses. The solution is to construct a septic tank which digests human waste using natural organisms. Such a design last decades and is self sustaining. The septic tank is made of concrete.
Current membership shows that the church has grown slowly over the years. The figures are a little unrepresentative of the real growth of the church as most young people from the area grow and leave to go and work in the cities or go abroad when opportunities arise.
The real number of people who are of the current generations who are church members because of their association with this church is fairly high, possibly of the order of several hundred, and scattered in several continents and countries.
The picture shows the order of current church membership. A quick look at the people in this group shows that there are a high number of children and young people. Zimbabwe has been successful in reducing the number of children per from around 8 in the early 1980s to around 4. This was done through the government initiative called "child spacing", a program that has helped many families cope with raising their young. Still the church has a good representation of young people, and also attracts children from non-member families locally.
A more detailed history of this church is in a PDF document which will be referenced for download from this blog soon.
Access to Elmwood Church
Traditionally the church members of Elmwood, the visitors, and the service users, almost all reach the site on foot or on bicycles. By the late 1970 a tiny minority could afford cars and would drive. Public transport in the form of buses travelling between Masvingo to the south and Chatsworth to the north, can be used by those who live near the road can can fit their schedule into the bus time tables.
Country buses in Zimbabwe are noisy, dusty, and dangerous to travel on. The country's driving laws are designed to protect the bus operators. In the event of an accident the victims are almost not considered by the law.
The picture shows a bus leaving Chatsworth on its way to Masvingo on the dist road. Elmwood is 9 km down the road from this point.
The picture shows one of the few buses as it leaves Chatsworth on its way to Masvingo. Elmwood Church is 9 km from this point on this dirt road. It is possible for no vehicle at all to pass by this stretch of road in 48 hours. Although the road goes north -south, the people who use the church building come from all directions using paths that have been there for over 60 years.
Population:
The area around Elmwood Church is populated exclusively by subsistence farmers each having anything between one and 4 hectares of land, depending on when the land they hold was allocated. Some newer farmers, allocated land during the recent land re-distribution, have 100 hectares each. Homesteads are about 200 metres or more apart, making it very difficult to plan future development such as electricity supply, or piped water supply. The prospects of such development at this point in time is remote.
The population around this area are of low income and mostly living below the poverty line as part of the nation's 68% who are internationally recognised as living below the poverty line. Round here the people work very hard and in most cases their production is high enough to meet their own demands for food security. It is just that their surplus does not amount to a value that enables them to support their families regarding such essentials as clothes, medicines, school fees, transport, or household fuel. One of the biggest problem requiring a solution is the efficient storage of food stuffs including grain, greens, and other types in the absence of electricity.
The church provides materials for ideas for income generation projects, disease prevention, and designs for heap but efficient grain storage units. The church is a registered charity working with its sister churches all over the world to source materials for these projects. More often than not the right materials arrive in a format we cannot process, such as digital format. We do not have computers, printers, Internet, etc. Sometimes we do not have pencils or paper.
This population is used to transmitting data and information through word of mouth.
Area Farming Products
The main crop in this area is maize. It forms the basis of the local diet and an average family needs about a tonne and a bit for each year. The land is sandy and not suitable for maize crops without costly fertilisers and other inputs.
Other common crops are leafy vegetables, also part of the staple diet, some small scale peanuts, groundnuts rappocco (grown for beer brewing), varieties of beans grown for their plant leaves and for their beans), etc. The crops all rely on on the rain pattern which can be erratic and play havoc with the harvest.
They also keep cattle, donkeys used for transportation, chickens, other birds, goats, sheep, ad other farm animals.
The picture shows a cart loaded with water containers, pulled by two donkeys on its way to the well about half a kilometer further down. If you look closely you will see a little boy enjoying a ride.
Most families only have a few of each and use them for work and food. There is never a surplus from which they could get cash if they sold them. Everything is small scale.
The farm animals come with their own risks of diseases and cost of care, as well as disputes over grazing rights.
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