Stories of Change

Jairos’ Story

Jairos was working quite a distance from home, in a different province, where he engaged in illegal gold panning. His wife, Chiedza, stayed in their home here in Mwenezi, due to persistent eruption of domestic violence in the household
when they were together. Jairos would maintain that his wife was useless, could not think or use resources well, including money. Early in the project, when we visited their home, he indicated that he never leaves money to his wife saying that she wastes the money. He said, “I used to send money from mining, but she has done nothing with the money,” when in fact he sent so little she could barely survive. The oldest son told us that their father had abandoned them. “We had poor education as our father does not take care of us. The houses and poor structures at their homestead is a result of poor relationships between our parents who do not plan together and pool money in the same direction.” Wachi, in justifying his position said, “I paid for this wife in form of lobola so she has to submit to me and receive what I hand over to her. What I do not want, I will not do.” In retaliation to the husband’s behavior, the wife became harsh, adamant and resistant to instruction from husband. They live a difficult life that would normally end in quarreling, conflicting and fighting. At which point he would go drinking with other men that also shared his view of life in general and the worthlessness of women in particular.

After Chiedza was selected and attended the first meeting it opened her mind to possibilities, she returned home to
challenge her husband to come. According to Chiedza, she told his husband that the greatest project benefit comes to
men.

Jairos’ first meeting was on discussing about sharing roles and duties in the home. He was against most of the things
that were discussed. He was against sharing duties because “it was inherited from our forefathers, thus reversing it will be
a betrayal of our tradition.” According to him the duties his wife performs were paid for through lobola. Jairos stood away
from the cooking teams very unwilling to cook. Neither did he fetch some water nor firewood. When coming for the
training sessions, he and his wife would arrive at different times or one would absent him or herself on particular days.
Gradually, however as the meetings continued and he heard how other men (Gender Champions of his community) were
living with their families, he started seriously considering how he thought about his wife.

On the day the Men’s Forum discussed Access, Ownership and Control of family resources, he began to slowly understand
why it was important to practice both cooking and participate in forum discussions. Then, a weeks later, he almost lost
all the gains in attitude he had acquired. The Forum discussed “Conflicts and Gender Based Violence” in the household.
This coincided with a week that Jairos had a heated dispute on resource use and control with his wife. Chiedza sold her
groundnuts and wanted to buy a phone, whilst Jairos, who was slowly changing (but the wife had not realized) proposed
buying a scotch cart. Chiedza argued that Jairos only wanted to buy resources that men controlled, whilst she still did not
have her personal phone. The dispute erupted into violence with the elder son supported and defended his mother,
ganging up against his father. Jairos was brave to phone the gender specialists, saying that he no longer wanted to
continue with the program because in trying to implement it, it has now given him problems. He was encouraged to be patient and promised that the community gender champions, which he and his wife had voted into that job, would assist
in resolving the matter peacefully and get the matter addressed. When gender researchers and champions did a follow
up on the matter, Jairos indicated that his wife was not understanding his point. He said, “Following what we have learnt
from FIT, I have realized the value of sharing duties, so I am of the view that if we buy a scotch cart, we will use it to do
tasks like fetching water and firewood, as I help my wife”. However, Chiedza had thought the cart was a way of taking
away her money. Utilizing the skills learned in the Forum, the community champions were able to remind the couple of
the value of communication in the home. That this type of communication includes discussing why they were desiring to
do something, and making sure the other partner understood and were in agreement before taking action. Both sides
realized they had not done this and the dispute was resolved.

Soon after this there was a function in the ward where the Gender Specialists saw Jairos cooking and serving food
together with another man in his group, Hosea Mpofu. Jairos approached us confidently to share that the project had
gone a long way in changing his life. “Guys, honestly this project is a game changer in my life. I have witnessed many
good things that never happened with me before. I am now very close to my children and I appreciate how my wife holds
me to goals that we jointly have made and agree on. I used to be very harsh. People including the police know that I
was harsh. People in the community were very afraid even to meet me on the road, especially women.  Now they are
accepting me and I am helping in community events like this one. That conflict over the scotch cart has helped me
experience the process of transformation,” adding “I am happy that I am learning many things from this program.”

“I realize that much of my problem came from the limited world I hung out with, the only friends I had were men who
enjoyed drinking and used fear to bully people to do what they wanted. So that’s what I thought real men did. The
forum exposed me to an alternate way of looking at the family, a new group of friends, a group of men from my
community that were doing well and had the respect of their wives, families and neighbors through thoughtfulness and
sharing. I was given a shirt at the cooking completion today that says, “Men can Cook” on the front and “Walking
together [with the wife] on the road called respect.” I am going to drop in on my old group on Monday, wearing this
shirt and see if I can get them to start thinking about this.

Jairos Watchi‘s story as told to Gender Specialist Paenda Obert & Caroline Pugeni following the 2022 Men can Cook
testing program.

Lionel’s Story

Lionel was complaining to his mother: “Father says, the secret to success is determined by your daily agenda, so why do
you waste your time traveling such a long way [4 hours] to and from Alpha Joy only to be taught about gender and
gender roles? At your age don’t you know anything about those topics? Why do you waste your time learning such
simple things that will never apply in your life? Why choose to waste time which you will never recover. You should use
your time for other fruitful tasks and events here at home.” Hearing the conversation, his father, Mirirai, invited his son
to have a talk. He started by saying “Our fathers used to live in clans where people with common beliefs lived together
and had guidelines for their day to day lives. The guidelines included a division of household tasks, as well as who should
own certain things, and who was in charge of what. These guidelines assigned lots and lots of work and responsibility on
women. Luckily, the SCORE FIT program came to train us on another way to look at gender issues. By meeting together,
we can now decide what parts of the traditional guidelines are unfair and harmful to our family. We have learnt that we should include women in planning so that we can hear their views.” After explaining all this to his son, Chakauya asked
him, do you still have any question or anything before I continue?”

Lionel said “my friends laugh and scorn me saying your mother and father always leave work at home and go to Alpha Joy for juice and sadza. Don’t you have sadza at home?”

His father softly told him, “What I want you to remember is that, a successful man is one who can lay a firm foundation with the stones others throw at him. Your friends are throwing stones at you, be sure to take those stones and build your firm foundation. Great things in business are never done by a person; they are done by a team. That’s why you see me and your mom regularly going to Alpha Joy. I and your mother go to FIT training because that’s where we meet other couples and we are trained by experts on life issues and we as participants share experiences. Then we come home and try new things each day, and we are successful because we have ample time to discuss issues that uplift
our family as we travel back and forth from the FIT training sessions.”

Mirirai went on speaking telling his son that, he used to cling to his traditional guidelines where all domestic work was put on his wife. “I used to give your mother endless list of tasks, Those tasks didn’t even include looking after you children or cooking, fetching water and firewood. Your mother was so tired that she would sometimes sleep without bathing herself. She used to wake up very early whilst I was asleep, prepare food, and warm water for you children to bath and go to school. Then she would strap your sister Aplonia on her back and go to the fields to weed our crops. She would be happy if the girl slept while suckling and she would lay her down and weed vigorously to hit the target in order to please me, as her husband. I would find her, around 10 or 11 o’clock and tell her ‘I am hungry I want food’. If she complained, I shouted insults at her saying I bought you (paid bride price) so that you can cook for me, bear me children and do all things I ask you to do, now leave what you are doing now, go home and cook for me, and please prepare water for me to bath I want to go and have some time with my friends.

“After my departure, she would go back to do the weeding until late afternoon. Then she would return home to welcome you from school and prepare supper for the whole family. She would collect firewood on her way home, then go to the borehole to fetch water for cooking and washing up. She would make fire and start preparing supper.”

Lionel sat listening attentively to his father and started crying but Mirirai said “don’t cry it is OK. This Score and FIT program, to me is like the Angel of the Lord, who spoke to Moses from a burning bush on Mount Horeb. I am now a new person because of the FIT program. I have tried to explain my life experience to you, my son. Tell me my son, whether you prefer the old me or the new me.”
Mirirai continued, trying to explain why he had behaved this way to his wife, Zvinatsei. “As a boy, I grew up being trained to be bold like a man. One day my uncle gave me very clear instructions and guidelines on how to regard women, ‘you should not seat or warm yourself with fire in the kitchen. All things done in the kitchen are associated with female. Men are different from women. Men should be brave, should do masculine tasks like digging anthills and cattle manure whilst women carry it and spread into the fields. Men should never associate with women because they will be said to be weak and if married never allow your wife into decision making because she is not your relative, you are unrelated. One day she may be a spy. Your family issues are confidential and are for you only.”
“So,” Mirirai continued, “from the time my father shared this information, I worked to live like a good Shona boy and
desist from associating with female since it was against our culture, according to my uncle. I did not associate with my
sisters or even my mother.”
Lionel, now starts to explain to Alice, the Gender Specialist from SCORE/FIT, “after this discussion I had with my father,
I appreciated my father’s efforts, taking time to explain all his previous life experience which brought more harm than
good, to my mother and other females. This allowed me to figure out real life and I am now eager to support the new
situation in my home, improve my life and that of my friends as well. I wish if my friends’ families could get such valuable
information which will help them transform their lives and those that stay with them. I will assist my mother and sisters
to do all domestic chores. When I grow up and marry, I will help my wife in everything.