Mother, Sifiso with family.
When we last caught up with her, Sifiso was hungry.
She and her family were struggling with very little food. In fact the children were severely malnourished and the 40-year-old widow was too weak to do anything requiring heavy labour.
In the maelstrom of suffering that has engulfed Zimbabwe this year, you might have expected Sifiso and her family to go under.
But that would be discounting the two-pronged efforts of the local church and our partners.
Together they fed Sifiso and 35,000 others this year and kept them alive as Zimbabwe’s imploding economy deprived its long-suffering people of their ability to feed themselves.
Sifiso pictured at home in September 2008. Picture: Karyn Beattie/Tearfund
But Tearfund’s support isn’t just about the short term. We’ve been helping Sifiso get a livelihood.
Her family received four breeding hens and a cockerel, enabling them to breed chickens to sell and generate income.
The only proviso for the family was that a year after receiving their hens, they had to give back 5 chickens.
These are then passed on to another family, thus increasing the sustainability of the project.
It’s a simple strategy that has helped Sifiso get through the struggles of living in broken Zimbabwe and there have been struggles.
For example, recently Sifiso contracted severe pneumonia for which she was prescribed expensive medication.
The only way she could afford to access the drugs was by instructing her son to sell three chickens.
When speaking to the monitoring and evaluation officer from Tearfund’s partner, Sifiso said, `I’m alive! Saved by the chickens.’
Tearfund’s Karyn Beattie explained, `The reality is that she was saved by the combination of the two projects.
`Without receiving basic food, Sifiso would have had to use her chickens to buy food. And without the chickens she may have had to sell her food to buy her medicine.’
The family have benefited in other ways too. The project has helped pay for her children’s school fees directly and indirectly as she now has gained strength to carry out the harvesting of thatch grass and to collect firewood which she sells to sustain her family.
Sifiso's children are showing better health thanks to regular food and their education is being paid for thanks to income generated from breeding chickens. Picture: Karyn Beattie/Tearfund