Bulawayo project set to help Ingutsheni Mental Hospital

This article was originally published by WEZIMBABWE, an organisation dedicated to the empowerment of Zimbabweans through the development of a strong and united global Zimbabwean community and to the provision of access to formal education and non-formal life skills training for children and young people throughout Zimbabwe.

Every Tuesday volunteers from a group of dedicated Zimbabwean women from the Catholic Women's League based at Christ the King church in Hillside get together at the home of one of its members. The get together to chat, to pray, to provide each other the spiritual Sustenance that has been the rock Zimbabwe's survival through difficult times has been built on. There is nothing particularly special about this group of women if taken at face value. Zimbabwean women have done this for generations, from savings clubs to prayer meetings, there has always been a very strong sense of community. What is special about this particular group is the reason for this weekly meeting, We Zimbabwe stated on its website.

Ingutsheni Hospital is located in the Bulawayo in the south of Zimbabwe in the suburb of Famona. It was established in 1903 as a mental asylum catering for the needs society's forgotten. Ingutsheni became a fully fledged Mental Hospital in 1993with a full time Psychiatrist brought over from England. The hospital has grown to a capacity of over 700 beds and is now exclusively concerned with the treatment and rehabilitation of patients with mental disorders. Unfortunately Like many Zimbabwean institutions during these difficult financial times the funding they have does not always meet the requirements of the Hospital and its patients.

Recognising this, the women of the CWL decided to step in to offer what assistance they could from the little they had. The hospital administration itself welcomed the help and through sheer unselfish co-operation a small but meaningful project was born. The concept is very simple. The women of the CWL get together once a week, use their own money to buy the ingredients they needed and sacrifice their time to provide meals at the hospital to supplement the nutrition already provided by the facility.

As the project grew it came to the attention of one of the Trustees of WEZIMBABWE who as a teen had attended Mass at Christ the King. Moved by this the organisation offered to provide some funding to ease the burden on the volunteers, at least in monetary terms. The Charity has now supported the project in its own small way for over a year now providing much needed funding as and when required.
There are countless projects of this type and this scale throughout Zimbabwe. There are thousands of women who quietly go about the business of supporting their communities as best they can for no reward and often for little recognition. These women are the living, breathing proof of the ethos adopted by WEZIMBABWE, together for the people. This is not something the charity came up with on its own but something every founding member and part of the current team lived growing up in Zimbabwe. A culture where Ubuntu, a common sense of humanity is paramount.
 
WEZIMBABWE is proud to be associated with this particular group of Grand Mothers, Mothers, Sisters and Wives doing their thing in Zim . The common people who carry the burden during the most difficult of times for no reward and no recognition but simply because it is the right thing to do, simply because of Ubuntu, our common sense of humanity.