Friends Of Pakati

Greetings everyone! Well I was expecting to hear about the trip from Bothwell, and he hasn’t let me down…so below is the message he sent me to publish here on the blog.

“Ousofia in London

In the early hours of the day, the massive 800+ seater Emirates Airbus descended and landed at Manchester Airport (I almost said Manchester United Airport). Making a beeline, we headed to the immigration authorities, where I expected to be bombarded with many questions. To my surprise, the official was remarkably professional and didn’t ask me many questions.

Chris was already waiting for me, and it was a memorable sight as he greeted me and handed over a present, the English way, of course. Someone from Zimbabwe, Mashonaland East, or more precisely, from Murewa—Murewa West, to be exact. Ward 14, Chinhoyi village—had just landed. A Pakati Primary and Secondary School alumnus and a member of the Friends of Pakati executive had truly arrived. Well, for those I grew up with, this was never my dream. If I had ever mentioned that one day I would be in the UK, USA, Malaysia, playing soccer in the Mberengwa area near Kahangaiwa’s house, I might have been labeled insane. The dream I never had was the dream of walking down the UK streets.

As we drove past the wide tarmac roads of the M-prefixed roads, Chris, my driver (I don’t want to offend him), decided to take me through other roads so that I would have a full view of everything happening. The terrain from Manchester city to Bradford was such a spectacular view. The ever-meandering roads, valleys, stone-built roads were my major attraction. Of course, I was not an Ousaofia in London, for London was not even close by. Perhaps it was an incredible two hours away, and forcing myself to go there was not the best. Tired but not very sleepy since 8 am is exactly 1400 hours in Southeast Asia, I felt very energetic. We had some photoshoots as I was welcomed by Chris’ sons. The weather was rainy, and I could think it could be one of the cold June days in Zimbabwe.

Zimbabwe and the UK share a lot of things in common. Our education system is British, and our spellings and everything mimic or mirror the British systems. The food we find in restaurants, the roads, and ways of driving make one think they are in another well-developed Zimbabwe. For those who have traveled from Johannesburg to Cape Town by road, please know that that’s how this part of the UK looks like.

The following day appeared to have been the most exciting one as we headed to Chris’s hometown and made our way to Scunthorpe FC field, where we recorded a podcast and video. Bradley, whose contacts I have been having, was waiting for us there, and we went for lunch and toured the nearest places before recording. These guys love their team, and Scunthorpe, besides being in unfashionable leagues, is permanently engrossed in the hearts of these men. Is it these men only, or is it also the entire Friends of Pakati fraternity who are beneficiaries of what the football team and its faithful supporters have done? I appreciated everything and had hoped if there was a match on the day.

As the never-moving sun was supposedly about to set, we found our way back to Bradford. This time, unlike on our way to Scunthorpe, we used another route for me to maximize my tour. I was really a tourist, for sure. The following day was another day. I had to go and see my former colleague, Lazarus Tigere, where we had a chat and some barbecue, braai before we went to see Veronica Walker, who had also had a hand in my traveling. The bubbly Veronica welcomed us well, and we were served a traditional sadza meal. I was not coming from Zimbabwe, by the way; I was coming from Malaysia, and where I stay, we rarely have time to find sadza. For me, it was the best moment too.

Sadly, Lorraine, one of my closest, was at work, and I could only speak to her through video calls. Derby is also far, and I could not see her. While Chris said he was returning the favor, I never thought hosting him at my house would require returning the favor, for I had done this due to my passion for the development of Pakati. Our aim is to make Friends of Pakati grow in leaps and bounds and become a fully-fledged NGO registered both in the UK and Zimbabwe. Our scope of operation must transcend beyond Pakati schools and perhaps become a national NGO. Who knows, the skies are the limit.

As my departure loomed, the anticipation of bidding farewell to this newfound world of British charm and Zimbabwean nostalgia hung in the air. The richness of the experience wasn’t lost on me as I packed my bags for the return journey to Kuala Lumpur.

The penultimate day saw me strolling through the enchanting streets of Bradford, taking in the quaint blend of Victorian architecture and modern urban life. It was a farewell tour, and every corner seemed to whisper stories of the people I had met and the moments we had shared. The vibrant culture of the city resonated with the echoes of Zimbabwe, creating a unique tapestry of memories. As I headed to the airport I had bittersweet symphony of emotions. Dorothy, my lovely Muzukuru came to meet Chris and I at the airport where we exchanged promises of staying connected despite the physical distance. The airport, a junction of arrivals and departures, mirrored the crossroads of my journey — a convergence of past and future.

As I boarded the plane, the images of English landscapes and Zimbabwean warmth played like a montage in my mind. The flight back to Kuala Lumpur was a transition from the cool English weather to the tropical embrace of Malaysia. Yet, the warmth of the memories lingered, creating a bridge between continents.

And so, the chapter titled “Ousofia in London” concluded, leaving me with a tapestry of experiences and a renewed commitment to the vision of Friends of Pakati. As I looked towards the future, I couldn’t help but wonder what other adventures awaited on the horizon, for the skies, indeed, are limitless.”

Here is a reminder of the previous blogs about this flying visit:

https://friendsofpakati.com/2023/10/13/welcome-to-a-friend-of-pakati/

https://friendsofpakati.com/2023/10/14/new-podcast/

https://friendsofpakati.com/2023/10/21/vlog-a-visiting-supporter-at-glanford-park/

Thank you for reading! If you can, please donate as we try to get more IT to Pakati schools: https://friendsofpakati.com/please-donate/

Greetings everyone!

Last weekend we had a flying visit from Bothwell Riside, our Friend of Pakati & key member of the team behind it. So how did he end up at Glanford Park, the home of Scinthorpe United Football Club, and what were we doing there? All will be revealed….

Let me go back to 2019, when I visited Pakati to hand over our first donations of IT & Sports tops, when Bothwell & his family kindly hosted me at their homestead just next to Pakati Secondary school.

They looked after me & made sure I was comfortable, and the welcome could not be bettered at any 5* hotel. As a former Teacher & Acting Head I was already familiar with the area, but had not stayed anywhere other than in the teachers house provided by the school.

So with Bothwell here in the UK, I wanted to return the hospitality & show him some of my own home area in Scunthorpe. I also arranged for Bradley Mell, our podcast host, to come alomg & meet us – the best place to meet would be at Glanford Park though sadly there was no home game that day for SUFC.

We went on to record the podcast which we published last weekend https://friendsofpakati.com/2023/10/14/new-podcast/

After that, we took a walk around part of the ground, and Bradley video’d it. We talked about the club & its connection to Friends of Pakati, and other related topics. Enjoy!

I also took him into Scunthorpe town centre, showed him where my parents had lived in Bottesford, & driven past the steelworks complex which gives SUFC its nickname of The Iron.

Bothwell tells me he will write his own story of the visit soon. I am glad to hear that he has returned safely to his home in South East Asia where he teaches in an international school.

If you want to help Friends of Pakati to get more computers out to the schools – see https://friendsofpakati.com/2023/10/05/please-get-computers-to-pakati/ – then please donate to https//www..gofundme.com/friends-of-pakati or https//paypal.me/friendsofpakati–

Hi everyone – we have a very special guest on our latest podcast..

Following on from our blog https://friendsofpakati.com/2023/10/13/welcome-to-a-friend-of-pakati/ our visitor talks to podcast host Bradley Mell & author Chris Walker about his first visit to the UK & other topics…

If you enjoyed this, please look out for the next blog, which features a video Chris & Bothwell talking together about his home town & his other passion – Scunthorpe United Football Club.

Today I was delighted to welcome ‘one of our own’ – former student at both Pakati schools – Bothwell Riside!

I met him at Manchester Airport this morning & here are the first photos…

Soon after arriving he was connecting to our wifi

Friends of Pakati friends

He didn’t feel too tired as he had slept quite well on his flights on the way here, so we went to Broadway mall in Bradford with my son Daniel.

We have a few things planned for his all-too-brief visit, so watch out for more in the next few days!

Hi everyone! Another important blog today from Friends of Pakati, it is a follow-on from the last post https://friendsofpakati.com/2023/09/17/whats-new/ where we showed the new IT lab at the Secondary school.

In the last couple of weeks I have had information & photos from Mrs Munatswa, teacher at the school. She sent me the following message: “These tables will accomodate 24 computers. May you please source more computers & wifi for Pakati secondary”

The school is delighted with the IT lab, as students have been admiring it.

So what we need to do is raise more funds to allow us to have the donated computers out to the school. There is no timescale as such, just as soon as we csn raise enough money for transporting the goods, probably at least £1000.

As it stands we have around £250 in the kitty, so we need to raise at least another £750 in the coming weeks. I have a small fundraiser at my work towards the end of this month which might raise another £50 or so.

Just recently in Zimbabwe there were elections, including local councils. The new Ward 14 councillor, Joakim Njenje, came to Pakati Secondary school to talk to the students.

Keep an eye out for more news from Friends of Pakati very soon!

Well after a well earned break from blogging, including a holiday, Friends of Pakati Author Chris Walker has returned to posting about Pakati!

I have been in touch with Mr Mugove Chifaka (Headmaster of Pakati Secondary school) recently. He has sent me some pictures & information about a very positive development at the school.

In recent weeks there has been work going on inside & outside one of the classrooms….

…but what is it all for? Why the changes?

From Mr Chifaka: “ICT room, fitted with new doors, standard shelves and tables, ceiling, screen doors and burglar bars. It is already connected to solar power. lt has capacity of 24 computers.”

There is also a new transformer at the school…

…but Mr Chifaka tells me the solar batteries need replacing, and don’t hold much power on cloudy days. This reduces the ability to power the computers they have as the new room is solar powered.

It is wonderful to see the developments, with the new paving, new room & new furniture, shelves, doors & burglar bars in place, much to the delight of the students.

All we need to do now is get these computers out there so we can see more of Pakati students learning digital skills!

Hi everyone! As promised in the previous blog https://friendsofpakati.com/2023/08/07/what-has-friends-of-pakati-done-since-it-started/ we are looking back on our fundraising efforts since January 2019.

So let us start wuth the very first major fundraising event – the Walk – which took place in April 2019.

Along with my son Daniel, we walked over 2 and a half days, from Bradford City Football Club to Scunthorpe United Football Club (around 60 miles/85 km) prior to a match between them on the Saturday.

The last leg was from Thorne to Scunthorpe, & we were joined by my work Colleague Karen from Bradford, & fellow Iron fan Brian from Scunthorpe.

We were welcomed at the club before the game, & were given a number of donations, and promised by the club to match our total at the end of August – which came to a total of over £1300.

The football shirts given were a bonus which raised more over time, and brought Iron fan Simon Faulkner on board with his knowledge of the market & expertise at selling. Here are some of the shirts we sold:

All of this helped us pay for the donated items of IT equipment & sports tops to get from Bradford to Pakati in September of 2019. Question then was what to do in 2020?

Well as Covid 19 took over the world, contact with other people became very limited. In my job as a Civil Servant I was designated as a Key Worker, so continued to go to work along with a handful of colleagues. I started walking to work & back, as part of my challenge to lose weight – which became my fundraiser for 2020.

I went from 117kg to under 100kg over a period of 8 months. From the funds raised Friends of Pakati were able to join up with out partner organisation, VaTonatsa Foundation, and provide support for exam-class students in all 5 schools in the same Ward with Pakati.

2021 was largely lost, but for the development of our merchandise range, all of which can be found here: https://friendsofpakati.com/merchandise/

There has been a steady stream of buyers, & still attracting new ones regularly, adding much-needed funds to the pot.

Last year, 2022, as we began to emerge from the pandemic, an idea first suggested in 2020, came to life at last…Get Tied Up For Pakati’…where football supporters agreed to wear a tie at a match between Bradford City & Scunthorpe United…

Aonther £1000+ was raised, and helped us send even more IT & Sports equipmemt to schools in the Pakati atea in September of 2022. This was further boosted by an evening event in Scunthorpe, mentioned in detail at the end of this blogpost: https://friendsofpakati.com/2022/07/10/friends-of-pakati-change-of-focusplus-latest-news/

So now in 2023, we are once again looking for funds, as we want to send more items to Pakati schools next year, and get other help to them too. What we need now is….ideas please! What can we do to try & raise money for next year? Please send us ideas by any method, @friendsofpakati is the way to find us on twitter (X), Facebook & Instagram, message us on this website, or email us at friendsofpakati@gmail.com

Thank you👍

Greetings everyone! I thought this would be a good time to look back at our main acheivements since Friends of Pakati began officially on 16th January 2019. So here goes….

As you may already know, that date – 16/01/2019 – waa significant to me personally, I chose it to start Friends of Pakati to coincide exactly with the 30th anniversay of the day I first set foot in a classroom at Pakati Secondary school.

One of the many things I did at the time of setting up, was to organise some publicity. This I was able to do because of connections I made through the football club I support, Scunthorpe United. These included the BBC Radio Humberside Sport team, who interviewed me that day, and the local newspaper, the Scunthorpe Telegraph who published an article the week after.

The radio interview brought good news the very next day! Driving home from work, Stuart Pine, an IT Manager at the Stephenson Group at the time, was listening. He emailed me the next day to see if I was interested in a few computers his employers were replacing. Not surprisingly, I said Yes Please!

I was able to collect them from the Stephenson Group offices in Leeds & got help to check them out, plus update them with free software to use, before I was able to plan how to get them to Pakati…

With help from a number of small donations, then after a fundraising campaign lead to a matching donation from Scunthotpe United FC (more on fundraising in the next blog), meant we were able to organise what we had – 8 PCs & 2 laptops, plus a number of football tops – into a delivery to Harare, capital of Zimbabwe. This is where just a few days later, I arrived for a visit to take them to the schools.

Delivering the goods to the school was a real pleasure, and their arrival lead to a great celebration within the community. It was a wonderful experience for me, getting the chance to meet many people who had been in touch with me since Friends of Pakati started, many of them had connections to the school including former students. The very first IT lessons took place while I was there too.

We planned more things for 2020, then Covid hit. As students were not going to school for some time, Friends of Pakati teamed up with VaTonatsa Foundation, one of our key allies in Zimbabwe, and produced/funded jointly some revision booklets for 5 schools in Ward 14 of Murewa District where Pakati is located. They were the 2 Pakati schools, 2 Chanetsa schools, and Mapanga Primary.

It wasn’t unti 2022 that we began to reslise that another visit to Pakati was finally possible, so we set up some events to raise funds once more, and were donated a number of brand new Chromebooks, and more sports tops & t-sbirts from Scunthorpe United. So we manged once more to pack them & send them to Harare via Coedma Frieight International once more.

As in 2019, I collected the goods from Harare & went to deliver what we had to all 5 schools in the Ward – 2 at Pakati, 2 at Chanetsa, and Mapanga Primary school. Another memorable time, with amazing receptions at all 5 schools

Lastly, we have been tryong to help both Pakati schools with solar power repairs. We managed to provide funds to get repairs done at the Secondary school, but so far do not have enough to help the Primary with theirs.

So that is what Friends of Pakati have done up to now…and we have more things to do yet! We want to get solar power restored at Pakati Primary, and transport the next round of computers we have in storage out to the schools. We need to raise more funds once again, and that is the focus of our next blog – what we have done to raise funds in the past, & what we might do in the future.

Hi everyone!

In 2022, one of the things we were able to send to Pakati along with the computers were gifts from my hometown football club, Scunthorpe United.

Along with other sports tops & t-shirts, the gifts were warmly welcomed by the two Pakati schools….

…and today Pakati Secondary school girls were playing football on the school playing fields

Back in 2019 I am sure yoi will remember other football shirts being given to the Primary school, and were much apprecisted too…

…and the under 20 boys team beat their counterparts from Chanetsa 2-0 at Pakati tecently in their SUFC tops.

So once more we thank Scunthorpe United FC for their ongoing support on behalf of Pakati schools!

Greetings all! Welcome to this blog, the first in the lead up to the Zimbabwean elections next month – see why here: https://friendsofpakati.com/2023/07/12/announcement-by-friends-of-pakati/

It gives me the opportunity to revisit things we – Friends of Pakati – have done in our first 4 years, & tell or retell some stories about Pakati and its community.

Let me first let you into a little secret…I have never considered myself to be a creative person, yet over this last 4+ years I have managed to keep this blog going, even through the Coronavirus pandemic.

Often I have no idea what I will write about, but then I might receive a message from someone which gives me an idea; other times it might be a picture – such as the one at the top of the school signboard – that will inspire me to create something from nothing, e.g. https://friendsofpakati.com/2021/05/18/not-just-a-school-signboard/

This post is dedicated to my first return to Pakati, using pictures I took there in 2018. The visit is what inspired me to start Friends of Pakati, thanks in no small part to Head Mr Chifaka (pictured above with the Author). His response to my question about what developments he would most like to see at Pakati was one word – Computers! This blog/website, social media presence & fundraising has all flowed from that single word.

In the next few weeks I will revisit out key fundraising efforts, our visits to Pakati in 2019 & 2022, stories I have told before, & meet some of our key stakeholders. Until then, here is a reminder of our important links:

For Twitter, Facebook & Instagram, use @friendsofpakati then for youtube: https://m.youtube.com/results?sp=mAEA&search_query=friends+of+pakati

For fundraising use http://gofundme.com/friends-of-pakati or http://paypal.me/friendsofpakati

To email us, use friendsofpakati@gmail.com