Steffi back in Zimbabwe! (English)

The United Cubs Tournament in Tichakunda took place on 30th of November 2013. Tichakunda (www.tichakunda.org) is an Early Childhood Development Full Day Care Centre in a squattercamp in Harare, Zimbabwe. It caters for 340 orphans and vulnerable children in the community. The children are in the age between 3 and 6 years and 75% of them have lost one ore both parents. Some are unter care of their grandparents and 10 are living in Tichakunda together with the founder of the centre Winnie Masaure. The school gets no support from the government and all the teachers, the kitchening and the gardening staff work voluntary since 2005.

For our United Cubs Tournament we invited the children who were going to graduate in December 2013 with a short letter. So these children were in the age of 5 an 6 years. We also invited the orphans who stay with Winnie Masaure and also the volunteers children. The volunteers had cleaned the place and prepared a race track with pulverised chalk. Our day started at 9:30 a.m. 140 children arrived in time and the pre-school secretary started to form 8 teams. Each team got a teamleader (a teacher or one of the bigger orphans or teachers children). After that we startet do distribute the t-shirts to each team and every team got a wristband in a different colour. The teamleaders did a great job, the gathered their team and motivited them to get number 1.

We started the tournament with a speach to thank the United Cubs and Irene Musonza who is the pre-school secretary taught the children to shout “United Cubs – Thank you” and to sing “United Cubs – Tinotenda” (“United Cubs – we say thank you”).  Our first race was a 50m-race and the results were taken down at the result desk. The teams celebrated the winners and started dancing, and specially the teamleaders, some of them carried the winners to the result desk. During the day we did furthermore beanbag-races, sackraces, tyreraces, egg-and-spoon-races, pegraces and a relay. We also had an obstracle course and a table for can-throwing.

For lunch we had hamburgers which had been fryed by 2 volunteers and myself the night before at the place I stayed. The children were very happy about a meal, which was completely different to what they eat usually, specially because they got meet.

After lunch we continued the races and ended with ropepulling between the different teams. We closed the tournament with a pricegiving, every child got an apple, crisp chips and a lollipop. Before dismissing the secretary activited the children again to shout “United Cubs, thank you!” and “We are happy”. Children and volunteers said again and again, that this was a very special day, that they really enjoyed and that they will never forget this day!

Cheers,
Steffi 🙂