Imagine waking up in the middle of the night, only to find out that your blankets are drenched in rain water and the only thing you can do is to endure the night up until the sun rises.
Sadly, that is the situation that Gogo Nyuchi and her family would find themselves in quite often times during the rainy season –they didn’t have a decent home to call their own.
“After my husband passed away, I was left with 9 children so then I relocated to my maiden home in Zaka with my children.” Gogo Nyuchi narrated.
Whilst she was in Norton, Gogo Nyuchi depended on her son for rentals and money for food. Things still remained difficult because the son didn’t earn much to support his mother; Gogo Nyuchi and his other siblings.
“I then realized that for me and my children and my grandchildren to continue living in town with the financial challenges we were having, it was going to be a heavy burden for us.” Gogo Nyuchi added.
The situation worsened by the day for Gogo Nyuchi and her family. The little support that she was getting from her son was not sufficient enough to sustain her and the young ones that looked up to her and she had no one else to turn to.
Gogo Nyuchi then relocated to Mhondoro after one of her sons managed to get a piece of land for her. Without enough money to build a decent home, Gogo Nyuchi and her family had no option but to build wooden cabins from logs so that they could find somewhere to sleep.
The wooden cabins that they had built could not last for long as they could not withstand bad weather, so Gogo Nyuchi and her children worked so hard to try and alleviate the situation. But the menial jobs that they were getting didn’t yield much returns so they only managed to build one-rounded hut with a thatched roof.
“We all slept in that one hut; me and my grandchildren. The girls and I would sleep on one side and the boys would sleep on the other side. We would set the fire in the middle and during the night, we would turn it out order to prevent the blankets from catching fire.” Gogo Nyuchi narrated.
That one rounded hut was everything that they had; it was their lounge, their kitchen, it was their bedroom. It was also the storage place for the few belongings they had.
Due to the fact that their hut was thatched, Gogo Nyuchi and her grandchildren were prone to bad weather, especially rain. Sometimes they had to spend the whole night awake because their blankets would have been drenched in rain water that would have leaked through through the roof.
One of the village leaders; Mrs Mudhambu in the Chingwere area were Gogo Nyuchi stays in, also bore witness to the sad predicament that Gogo Nyuchi and her family were in.
“I am the one who welcomed Sekai Nyuchi when she relocated to this village. I could see that her and her family were suffering a lot” Mrs Mudhambu said.
Gogo Nyuchi and her family saw and experienced the rough side of life. But in the midst of their troubles, God answered their cry through the woman of God; Ruth Makandiwa and in no time, they traded their pain and suffering for peace, joy and comfort.
They finally had that one thing they had been crying for a very long time.
(To be continued…)
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