A story from our ZANE carers showing the sad plight of the elderly in Zimbabwe.
Jeanie
In her wheelchair Jeanie sits at a long table making things to sell. In summer its pickles and chutney – she cuts up mangoes and onions, chilies and peppers, adds pinches from the spice jars and finally her ‘secret ingredients.’ All the jars have been sterilized and are lined up, ready to be filled. Jeanie rolls out pastry on her production line table, making sausage rolls, pies and samosas.
All Jeanie’s hard work doesn’t make enough money to pay all her bills but it pays about half she tells me – the rest comes from ZANE. “I mustn’t just sit here and wait for handouts for everything, I have to try and help myself in whatever way I can.”
It’s a humbling thing to see Jeanie leaning forward in her chair or wheelchair to do all the things she does and every month she comes up with a new idea that she can’t wait to tell me about.
“Remember all those jigsaw puzzles you gave me,” she says, “look what I’ve done.” Meg has done the puzzles, glued them onto hardboard and framed them and now she is selling them. She tells me that she takes photos of the framed puzzles on her phone and then advertises them on social media groups.
“Every dollar helps,” she says, “but I couldn’t do it without you and the help you bring every month and the best thing is I get to see you and that makes it all worthwhile.”
* Names and images may have been changed for privacy reasons
If you are already a ZANE donor, we thank you from the bottom of our hearts. If you are not a donor but would like to be, please follow the link below and know that every donation, however big or small, goes directly to where it is most needed. If you would like to help but can’t donate, please join the ZANE family and ‘like’ or ‘share’ our posts or write us a Google review – every positive step helps spread the word about the life changing work ZANE does.
Thank you – Nicky Passaportis ZANE Australia
Please donate to support pensioners struggling to survive in Zimbabwe
Any assistance is greatly appreciated and goes a long way to giving our pensioners a better quality of life and lift the pressure of money worries which is very debilitating emotionally.
(Donations made to ZANE in Australia, are tax-deductible)