It's SteeTime!

I am sitting in a meeting planning for the close-out of US Government-supported programmes in Zimbabwe. Even writing that sentence feels strange. For more than two decades, American funding has been woven into Zimbabwe's development and health response. HIV. TB. Malaria. Maternal and child health. Food security. Orphans and vulnerable children. Adolescents. Reproductive health. Humanitarian assistance. Education. An entire generation of development workers has grown up inside this ecosystem. And now, we are sitting in meetings discussing how to close parts of it down. I am not a political analyst. I cannot give you the sophisticated geopolitical analysis of how we arrived here. I cannot tell you who should have conceded what, or give you a technical model predicting exactly how many lives will be affected. But I am a witness. I have sat in the meetings. I have watched programmes move from PowerPoint presentations into communities. I have seen healthcare workers trained, medicines d...

I went into healthcare and mental health because I wanted to help people live fuller lives. I just never imagined that one day, some of that work would involve bricks, concrete and floor plans. My husband and I build houses. Cluster homes, to be specific. We are slightly obsessed with utilising minimum space in a maximum and beautiful way. People in this country urgently need accommodation, and as our cities grow, we have had to rethink what home can look like. Sometimes that means smaller spaces, shared developments and making much better use of the land we already have. The more we build, though, the more I realise that construction is not really just a construction business. It is a people business. It is about the relationships you have with service providers, approvers, partners and clients. It is about bringing all those individual pieces together to make something possible. We do not have the kind of capital the big construction companies enjoy, so for us, relationships, creativ...

For the last little while, one phrase has followed me everywhere. God keeps His promises. It came through devotions, the Bible, prayer...the same gentle reassurance over and over again. God keeps His word. The strange thing was, I didn't know which promise He was talking about. I've had so many Words in the last few years, I didn't know which one specifically was being referred to. Which breakthrough? Which outcome was being promised? So the words comforted me, but I couldn't quite place them. Then, slowly, something else began to emerge. Maybe it was not a promise about something happening. But a promise about a way. We usually think there are only two options. There is the life we have: It pays the bills. It is sensible. Stable. Responsible. Maybe we've been there for years because we need the money. Maybe because we don't yet have the qualifications to leave. Maybe because it is what everyone expected of us. Maybe because it is simply what we know. It isn...

This weekend we buried uNaTatji.  She was one of those women whose presence quietly held a family together. Gentle, yet strong. Cheerful. Curious. Loving. She felt like home. She was an anchor. As we gathered under the bright blue Thekwane sky and stood around her grave, it felt like more than one person was being buried. It was as though we were grieving all our parents... those who have already gone before us, and those who are still here but have reached the age we quietly fear. Something shifts when the generation above you begins to leave. You realise that the foundation you have always stood on will not always be there. You realise that you are becoming the adults. One of the hardest parts of the weekend was watching the mantle being passed. We, the children, suddenly found ourselves organising, coordinating, making decisions, carrying responsibilities that had always belonged to our parents and aunties and uncles. Thankfully, the older generation was still there, gent...

There was a day when suddenly my father became human. Not all at once. Not dramatically. Just enough for me to realize that the man I had quietly placed on a pedestal was, in fact, a man. He let me down in a way I did not expect. I cannot even remember all the details now. What I do remember is how deeply it hurt. I spent most of that season pretending I wasn't disappointed. The rest of the time, I held on to bitterness. Denial and unforgiveness are a dangerous combination. One refuses to acknowledge the wound. The other refuses to release it. Together, they create a burden that becomes so familiar you forget you're carrying it. For years, I carried mine. The first step was simply realizing it was there. I had to admit that beneath my independence, beneath my competence, beneath my carefully curated "I'm fine," was a little girl who felt let down. But the deeper truth was this: I had expected my father to be more than human. I had held him to a standard no person ...

I got into mental health work because I was looking for answers. If I'm completely honest, it started with me wanting to feel better. Of course, I wanted others to benefit too. But first, I was searching for relief. For understanding. For a way back to myself. Like many people, I started where everyone tells you to start. "Get counselling." So I did. The first counsellor I saw was at Harare Hospital. I remember walking into the office after a ward round, on my way to a locum shift. I approached the consultation room almost as if I were enquiring about a patient. Then I had to admit that I was the patient. She took me through what was essentially a problem-solving intervention. We listed the problems and explored practical solutions. It was helpful in a way. Most people never actually sit down and systematically think through their challenges. It was comforting to be heard. I made one or two changes. Then I tried a psychologist at a reputable private practice. She kept cal...

Last term, I became burnt out from parenting. Not from loving my children...that part comes easily. I was burnt out from the school runs, timetables, WhatsApp groups, requests, competitions, forgotten costumes, sports fixtures, lunchboxes, reading logs, projects, and the invisible pressure to keep up with everybody else’s very full lives. And whilst I genuinely loved being part of my children’s world, somewhere in all of it...I lost myself. Not dramatically. Quietly. In ways that disturbed me. I noticed how much of my mental energy was being consumed by managing, anticipating, organizing, remembering, rushing, comparing, and performing motherhood instead of actually living it. So this term, I want to do things differently. Not perfectly. Just differently. I want less noise. Less pressure. Less performing. This year, I will not be swept up by the crowd enrolling children into every possible extra activity simply because everyone else is doing it. My children will do art because they gen...

Every Mother’s Day, instead of feeling celebratory and blessed, I often feel something quieter. A kind of sorrow. A tenderness. A deep compassion for women and the complicated terrain of motherhood. Motherhood was complicated for me long before I ever held a child in my arms. It began with longing. With infertility. With years of trying to understand what was wrong with my body, as though womanhood itself had become a puzzle I was failing to solve. That kind of longing is brutal. It rearranges you. I remember feeling wounded by the sight of pregnant women and babies. Irrationally offended by their existence. I thought they were conspiring to humiliate me. Or worse, avoiding me because they could see the failure stamped across my forehead. There were months of hope... the trembling anticipation of double lines that became single lines. The grief of miscarriages. Plural. There is a particular loneliness to miscarriage because the grief often has nowhere to go. It is grief without photogr...

Every morning, before Harare has woken up, there is already a line forming. Not a short or orderly queue that moves with predictable rhythm. No, a long, patient, aching line of people who have nowhere else to go. I drop off my relative there each weekday at the Radiotherapy Centre at Parirenyatwa Hospital. He is battling a brain tumor. That alone is a heavy sentence to carry. But it is not the only burden he carries. Because before treatment comes waiting. And before waiting comes arriving early enough to have a chance. The Queue That Starts at Midnight There are two queues. One for those who can pay or who have been marked as priority. And one for everyone else. Both queues are unpredictable. You can wait for hours on any unsuspecting day. By midnight, people are already gathering. They sit or lie down holding their place in a tent outside the centre. Names are written down and some have made a business of queueing for others. Many have travelled from outside the capital city. Fro...

  “I’m just feeling numb, I can’t even respond to this email,” thinks Sekai [1] , as she slowly leaves the Microsoft Teams meeting. She had presented a report which raised a lot of discussion. She opens her Outlook inbox to find mail from her supervisor with a new assignment required at close of business. That is in 45 minutes! Sekai (42) is a coordinator of one of the districts in a new HIV project. She has always been high-performing, task oriented and an effective leader. But recently she has noticed that she has been losing energy and motivation. She thinks maybe she is not getting enough sleep, but she can never seem to get renewed after a night’s sleep. She is also starting to feel that nothing she does makes any difference or is appreciated. Could Sekai be experiencing burnout? If so, what steps can she take to manage it and prevent it from happening again? Is a happy, productive work-life possible for the typical worker in the development industry? I can tell you now, that ...

  On the evening of 14 August 2021, we received the news that our boss was gone forever. Dr Christopher Zishiri, affectionately known as CZ, had died in his residence after a short week of COVID-19-related complications. What we didn’t know, was that we were not going to go through normal grief. It would be a grief confused with figuring out that work family is actually family. That emails and zoom meetings could continually trigger tears for weeks to come. It would be a grief that left you unmotivated to touch your work because who then would revert with “Well done Chiremba!” It was going to leave us scattered and sober and sad.   My interest in TB work began the day CZ stepped into my master’s in public health lecture room to tell us all about the International Union Against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease. It was a long title but when shortened to ‘The Union’ it became catchy, somewhat elite. I remember asking him a lot of questions in that class and he, as he did, respon...