It was lovely to finally get Edeliwe’s house finished and blessed by the Pastor of Sanyati Baptist Church. Members of our local committee, the church, the local councillor and neighbours came to the blessing to show support to Edeliwe & her family and to bring gifts of groceries. Edline gave a little speech about what Ratidzo Trust is about and thanked Innocent, Edeliwe’s Son, for building the house. Several other people also gave words of thanks including Innocent, the Councillor and Edeliwe herself. The pastor then blessed the house and there was even some singing. There was also a new family member as one of the goats we donated to them had given birth! Innocent has now started to take down the old round hut and is rebuilding it nearer to the new house to use as a traditional kitchen.

We have been looking for someone to be a link here with the families we are working with when we are away. Having met innocent and spent time working with him we decided to ask him if he was able to help us, he was more than happy. So we spent a full day taking him round to all of the families, introducing him, checking on the projects, asking how they were etc. Several of the goats have given birth and two families are now on their third broiler cycle and one just started their 4th. We also took the opportunity to talk about other projects that they think they might be able to do in the future. There were several ideas from selling floor polish to needing a water tank to help with their gardening. Useful ideas that we can use to help these families further going forward. There was also the opportunity to share in prayer at every house which was a real blessing.

Two more batches of quails have hatched, a total of around 280. These will be for selling for meat once they reach 6 weeks old to raise some funds for the Trust, ready for when we return next year. We hope to hatch another 200 or so before we leave. Our hens are laying eggs like made now, 25 chicks have already hatched and another 4 hens are sitting on around 60 eggs. So Mum will be busy looking after chicks while we are away. We have also acquired 6 ducks recently which we hope to start breeding from. We now need to think about more space to house the ever growing poultry family and have plans to apply for funding to do this. It will be interesting to add up what we have when we leave and compare to what we started with. It should mean that we will have a good start for when we return next year to be able to help more people.

It has really started to heat up here, touching 100f and reminds us why we decided to be here during the Zim winter. Most of our work we do now between 7-10am and then 3-6pm as it’s getting too hot the rest of the time. Are we looking forward to returning to the UK weather? Not sure about that but in some ways it will be nice to be cold!