Online Reporter
Bruce Ndlovu, Sunday Life Reporter
WHEN the plight of Gogo Betty Jiri was splashed on the pages of some of the biggest media outlets last year, hearts across the country fluttered in despair.
The wife of perhaps the prominent philanthropist, national hero Jairos Jiri, was living in squalor that seemed to ridicule her illustrious name.
The pictures of her, bedridden in a single room at the Jairos Jiri Centre in Nguboyenja, brought heartbreak and many tears. This sorrow also brought an outpouring of goodwill, as well-wishers, major companies and institutions of repute came together to help out a hero in need.
Unseen in all this, acting behind the scenes as the heart-warming scene unfolded, was John Munutsi Jemwa, a visually impaired Nguboyenja resident who had played a major hand in alerting the world to Gogo Jiri’s plight.
Jemwa had been there when Gogo Jiri laid wreaths for her husband at the National Heroes Acre and he was there when she was invited by the Diaspora Forum for a ceremony in honour of her late husband.
Jemwa’s work with Gogo Jiri was not a flash in the pan. In Nguboyenja, he was known for his desire to always lend a helping hand wherever it was desperately needed. This was even though he and his wife, who suffers from muscular dystrophy, are both people living with disabilities.
For all his good intentions, Jemwa would not have known that only a few months after he helped Gogo Jiri, he would be in distress himself.
“While I was doing all those things, I had my own challenges and wars that I was fighting, as far as being self-reliant is concerned. At the time, I had set aside my family’s challenges just for the love of a person who had put us, as people living with disabilities, at the forefront. He made us recognised from the early days, as far back as 1953, before even the first organisations looking at people living with disabilities were ever established to take care of us,” Jemwa said.
The struggles that Jemwa had quietly carried while helping others have now burst into the open, leaving him and his family facing an uncertain future.
“This year, I started having a few challenges. I lived in a rented apartment in Thorngroove because we don’t own a house. Someone had promised to fund our mobile food takeaway, but it’s unfortunate because the project has been postponed and postponed until we became homeless,” he said.
Jemwa said the family had pinned their hopes on a mobile food caravan business that they believed would finally give them a measure of stability and independence.
“As I speak right now, we have a valid licence with the City of Bulawayo for a mobile food caravan, which is supposed to be operating in Nguboyenja.
“So now, we are back to square one. We have to raise a caravan. That is costing about US$6 400. So, we wrote a few letters to various corporations within Zimbabwe, appealing for assistance. We even stated that due to lack of collateral security, we failed to acquire a loan. It was very difficult. They wanted collateral security for the house for us to secure the loan. So, as it is now, we are now homeless. Our six-year-old child is going to school. As I speak, my property right now is at a shop. So, the situation that we are in, as it is right now, we don’t have a home,” he said.
The family’s hardship has also taken an emotional toll on their children, who now have to navigate school life under painful circumstances.
“We have a child who is in Grade Seven and she is supposed to be doing projects right now, as you know. We don’t even have the money to sponsor those projects. She’s going to school with an empty stomach and the school fees have not been paid since last year.
“So, you know, when the child comes home two hours after school, we are traumatised because she’ll be crying. She’ll say, ‘I’m going to school with an empty stomach. I’m going to school and I don’t have projects.’ So, all that is affecting us to a great extent,” he said.
After months of trying to weather the storm in silence, Jemwa said the family eventually realised that they could no longer carry the burden alone.
“In the end, we saw it’s not wise to keep the problem to ourselves. We thought that if we share the problem, a problem shared is half-solved,” he said.
Despite the hardships that have engulfed his family, Jemwa insists that his faith in humanity and community has not dimmed. He believes that receiving help today does not diminish his desire to continue helping others tomorrow.
“We believe that while we are seeking help today, tomorrow it will be our turn to help others. When we used to work, and when I used to work myself, we always tried to help out. We have people who we assisted in the community of Nguboyenja.
“We have a girl who is visually impaired at McKeurtan for who we bought uniforms for. We are not rigid. Our philanthropic work in the community did not start with Gogo Jiri. When we have money, whatever little we get, we do share,” he said.
Bongani Ndlovu