adminfull school terms and sees herself resitting the same grade when she goes back to school.
She has two brothers and the ten-year-old is in Grade 2 owing to the same challenges.
The seven-year-old boy can forget enrolling into school any time soon as the funds are constrained.
The seven-year-old spends the day restraining the stray goats and chasing the hens from pecking the drying maize intended for the grinding mill.
These three live with the paternal grand parents in Sidhakeni village in Zhombe. Their mother decided to leave them in the rural area because she found the going tough in the city – with three small kids and no home to call her own she had no choice.
Shupi lost her husband when the seven-year-old was barely one-year-old.
Speaking recently, she blames her late mother for all the misfortunes that have befallen her as she has never known her father.
There is a Shona saying: “Pakatsika remberi ndipo panotsika reshure.” This when literally translated means, like father like son.
This then makes Shupi a lost sheep.
Suckling a nine month old baby last week while selling fruit by the road side in the city she opened up and said she was seeking divine intervention. She seems not to get it that she has to take stock of her behaviour
and adjust.
She believes that some supernatural power will do the trick for her.
She therefore carries three similar white stones (muteuro) that she got from one man of the cloth from the Chizhanje shrine. (kumasowe)
She does not need that. She needs to act responsibly. When one sows the blackjack, they should not expect to harvest corn.
“I have not been to Sidhakeni to see my three children. I feel like I have abandoned them. Its more than two years since I last visited them. I do not even know if they are still in school. But someone I met told me that they intermittently attended and that the oldest girl was now in Grade 5. She could be in Form 1,” she said holding back tears.
On being asked why she was crying she speaks of a life-riddled with hardships and now sees it replicating itself in her daughter’s life, if not all of them.
“I used to live in Budiriro 3 when my husband who was self employed as a plumber was alive. Then my children attended the local schools. The even attended creche before going to school,” she said.
“My husband got so ill that he stopped working,” she said.
She said they got help from her maternal grandmother who had a house in Tafara. She had relocated to her rural home in Mutare. There the family got two rooms free of charge and they lived there for sometime.
“Gogo had said we would start paying her some rent when my husband got back to work so we were only paying the water and electricity bills,” she said.
Her joy was shortlived.
Life took a nasty turn when her grandmother died in a bus accident the same year and her uncles asked her to shape up or ship out.
“When gogo died, anasekuru asked us to pay rent or move out. We could not afford it so we moved out to Calidornia Farm which is an unplanned settlement on the periphery of Tafara,” she said.
She says her husband’s health deteriorated even further and the dusty floors did not do him any good.
“He coughed badly and it was difficult to get to the clinic in New Mabvuku because he could hardly walk. In the end he just stopped taking his TB medication and since we had moved house, the follow-up community nurse aides failed to trace us,” she said.
“We decided to go to Zhombe during the school holiday and intended that he would restart treatment there. I scrounged for bus fare and my family was on the bus to the Midlands. Unfortunately he had wasted away so much that he only lived for 2 weeks,” she said.
“We laid him to rest at the family shrine and I left my two older children there whilst I came back to get their belongings as they would now begin school there.”
This she did and had at least one heavy burden off her shoulders as she only had to find a small place for her and the baby.
“I got transfer letters from Tsinhirano Primary School and enrolled my children in school at Sidhakeni primary. I would visit them after about three months when I had enough groceries, cash and books for their learning needs,” Shupi said.
She does not understand where she missed her step because all along, she had been struggling but managing somehow.
“I continued vending but a friend influenced me that it paid better to do both vending and a sidekick after hours so as to get enough to look after my children.”
She therefore found herself on the bus to Zhombe laden with groceries and told her old mother-in-law that she intended to leave the small boy there too since she had found formal employment.
“My mother-in-law was thrilled and even said prayers that I should live long. I left after two days. I visited them then occasionally thereafter and all was well,” she said.
“My children then did not miss school.”
Today she is a former shadow of herself as she says she has not seen her children in two years. She can not stomach the shame of strapping a baby on her back and visiting her in-laws.
On being told that she has a right to remarry and still be able to visit her children, she breaks down and narrates her road to dungeon.
“If I was married then there would be no problem. I do not even know the father of the baby on my back. As I said, my friend Sue led me on this dangerous path. I was careful and used protection but there is that client who always dangles the carrot stick and gives more, so one is tempted and accepts. That is how it happened. I do not even know who the father is. I tried to abort and nearly died from the back street attempt.
“This is a stubborn baby she survived the abortion so I am stuck with her. Infact, I have named her Gamuchirai. I somehow feel bad and love her very much but the problem is she will one day ask who her father is, there is the jinx,” she said.
“I do not know if she will ever meet her siblings in Zhombe, its tough (zvakandiomera),” she said.
This has seen Shupi not able to visit Zhombe. She now vends on the streets of Harare by the day and night.
“I have no where to go. My mother never told me who my dad was but she said he came from Mozambique and he returned when they failed to live together. That is all, she would not even tell me the name.”
“My uncles chased me away long before I had this new edition so they are a non-starter,” she added.
Shupi now sees this repeating in her kid and she curses the day she was born.
“I wish I was not born, how can one experience all these mishappenings and still live,” she asked.
Despite the fact that her husband had TB/HIV co infection, Shupi who also knows her HIV status to be Code 1, still goes around sleeping.
She admitted that she did not take the boy now aged seven for an HIV test since he was an exposed child.
She said there was no need, he was healthy.
“Aah for that one, there is no need for an HIV test, he is healthy, chigwindiri chaiko, akajambwa nechirwere,”(so healthy, the HIV virus skipped him) she said.
But with HIV one can not tell using the eye, which seems to be the case with Shupi. So much for the “eye clinical test”. The young boy needs to be taken for an HIV test as is a requirement for all exposed children.
On being told that she was out to kill, Shupi dismissed that she was deliberately infecting people.
“That is not true, can any reasonable person who knows that they are HIV negative go out and have unprotected sex with a stranger. That is rubbish, they are already infected hence them offering more to infect you. Infact it’s a cross infection pot-pourri,” (igapu rekuzora nekuzorana) she said.
A counsellor with one of the health institutions in the city said that it was disturbing that such behaviour was prevalent in our communities.
“Even a man who has lost a wife still goes out having unprotected sex. Infact my neighbour lost his first wife due to an HIV-related illness in 1998 and in 2003 he had remarried,” she said.
“The second wife had three miscarriages before she died in 2008 and today the same man is on the verge of tying the knot again. Has he disclosed his status or he is out to kill the innocent?” she asked.
When it comes to love matters, people stop using their head and they should discuss their HIV status long before they become passionate as it clouds the thinking and the two end up thinking vertically.
It boggles the mind, does the reckless one living positively not fully understand the dangers of picking up some infections from the other part. Each person has their own strain and acquiring all the strains will surely see the system overloaded and buckling.
If it is the thinking that “I will not go alone” then the awareness team needs to refocus and have the already infected re-educated on the dangers of such reckless undertakings.
In all you endeavour to get; get correct understanding.
Till then, God bless you.
Online Reporter