CATHY BUCKLE'S WEEKLY LETTER FROM ZIMBABWE!

SCHOOLS WILL NOT REPOEN!

Dear Family and Friends,

The simple every day routine of children going to school has kept most families sane in this last traumatic decade in Zimbabwe. When war veterans and mobs were swarming onto farms and evicting everyone, as long as the children were able to keep going to school, parents found a way to cope.

I remember one occasion during that terrible time when one of my son's junior school teachers told me what a difficult time they were having in the classroom. The child of a farmer who had been violently evicted from his home was in the same classroom as the child of the war veteran who had done the evicting. Both children were traumatized, bullying and insults were being traded in the playground and both children needed counselling. On another occasion when the school was forcibly closed and taken over by security personnel, children were traumatized when they returned and found a bullet on the cloakroom floor.

Zimbabwe's teachers, despite having to work under unbearable conditions and often under attack themselves, have quietly steered our children through these most traumatic years.

Chased away from their jobs by militant government youths, the teachers waited until things calmed down and then came back to work. Accused of being opposition supporters they were intimidated and harassed and yet still they came back to the classrooms. The head of the teachers union has been arrested repeatedly, been beaten in custody and yet still he speaks out. School administrators and head teachers have been arrested and held in police cells for raising school fees but when they were released they just went back to work and carried on.

When we parents were crying, bleeding and homeless we would arrive at the school gates and hand our children over to compassionate, gentle, caring, professional staff who somehow managed to make everything alright.

There are hundreds of stories about what's been happening in Zimbabwe's schools these last nine years - to describe it is an education system under attack is a gross understatement. Teachers earning enough in a whole month to buy just one banana. Six children sharing one text book. Parents having to provide food for both their own children and the teachers. Schools which have no stationery, no chalk, no equipment, no water, no food.

According to the UN Children's Fund, school attendance in Zimbabwe dropped from 85% in 2007 to just 20% by the end of 2008. Now, at the worst possible time and with the country at its lowest ebb, the government have announced that schools will not open on the 12th of January as they should, but two weeks later - culling yet more precious days from our children's education. All these apparently little things are having a dramatic impact on our lives in Zimbabwe. Our children and our country will pay a heavy price in the years to come.

Until next week, thanks for reading,

love cathy.