Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2003. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
International Federation of Red Cross and Red Cresent Societies - 5 September 2003
John Sparrow and Selma Bernardi in Chitungwiza, Zimbabwe
Friday
16.00pm
It's been a long day for Gladys Sanangurayi. She is looking tired when Red Cross health care volunteers Elizabeth Honyerwa and Elizabeth Shambamuto reach her. A volunteer at the general hospital, she is doing the job of a nurse because it doesn't have enough. Daughter Marceline, 19, is following in mother's footsteps. She's a volunteer clinic orderly.
Society isn't repaying them. Gladys is another of the Elizabeths' clients. She is HIV positive and homeless. Unless home can be defined as a one-room wooden shack she shelters in with her five children.
Since her husband died in 1999 she has had one setback after the other. First she had to move because she couldn't pay the rent, then having gone with the children to her mother's house she found herself evicted.
"Mother said she was a widow herself. She couldn't afford to have us there unless we paid rent," she says.
With nowhere to go she turned to the Zimbabwe Red Cross, for whom she already did voluntary work. The Red Cross helped her find a plot of land, and someone gave her wood and asbestos for the cabin. She and her children put it up.
It is no more than a garden shed and holes in the walls let in the elements. When it rains they get wet and in southern Africa's winter it is bitterly cold at night. The children cough incessantly.
The shack has no water, no toilet, no electricity. Water is fetched from a neighbour's house and she pays for it. She has tried to find somewhere else but says landlords turn her away, suspecting HIV because of her rashes. Rents are mostly too expensive anyway.
She does make a little money selling firewood, and some of the vegetables she grows around the shack. But Red Cross food and support is critical.
What the future holds is uncertain but, as the Elizabeths say, in every sense of the word Gladys is living positively. She has, indeed, redefined the phrase.
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