Daily Meals

Zimbabwean day schools don't provide meals for their pupils. In 2009, Dzikwa served children one hot meal every day of the year for the seventh year running. The grand total was 130,000 meals, or 51,000 (65%) more than in 2008. On the busiest days, as many as 425 children came to eat.

The meals, which consist of maize stew, vegetables and small portions of either meat, fish or beans, are cooked over an open fire in a shed in the backyard of one of the schools. The meals are prepared by two alternating groups of three mothers of Dzikwa children. 

Dzikwa's Zimbabwean volunteers have to spend a lot of time every month tracking down and purchasing ingredients and then getting them to Dzivarasekwa Primary School No. 4, which has kindly agreed to store them for us.

In 2009, we bought 21 cows or bullocks, each of which gave us 200 kg of meat when butchered. We also bought 13,000 kg of maize meal, 360 litres of cooking oil, 600 kg of dried kapenta fish and huge quantities of basic vegetables. Some of these vegetables were donated on a weekly basis.