Chigona and Mutemwa: A siamese relationship

14 Jun, 2015 - 00:06 0 Views
Chigona and Mutemwa: A siamese relationship (From Top Left Clockwise) A poster showing directions to the Leprosy Care Centre ; Brother Silico Mukuwe ; Benson Charera and Ezeria Kachera, both patients of Mutemwa are married and do self-help work to supplement what they get ; Brother Silico Mukuwe chats with one of the inmates; Bendekani Chiteshe; one of the houses at the centre, Chigona Mountain and nurse Priscilla Nare who has been there for the past 11 years

The Sunday Mail

Gilbert Munetsi – Religion Correspondent

CHIGONA Mountain is considered sacred by the multitudes of people from the world over who visit it for spiritual reasons. From a distance, the eye catches the sight of a faint cross stuck on its massive belly.

(From Top Left Clockwise) A poster showing directions to the Leprosy Care Centre ; Brother Silico Mukuwe ; Benson Charera and Ezeria Kachera, both patients of Mutemwa are married and do self-help work to supplement what they get ; Brother Silico Mukuwe chats with one of the inmates; Bendekani Chiteshe;  one of the houses at the centre, Chigona Mountain and nurse Priscilla Nare who has been there for the past 11 years

(From Top Left Clockwise) A poster showing directions to the Leprosy Care Centre ; Brother Silico Mukuwe ; Benson Charera and Ezeria Kachera, both patients of Mutemwa are married and do self-help work to supplement what they get ; Brother Silico Mukuwe chats with one of the inmates; Bendekani Chiteshe; one of the houses at the centre, Chigona Mountain and nurse Priscilla Nare who has been there for the past 11 years

It is here, on its whale-shaped back, that thousands spend the night every 4th day of September, communicating with a divine spirit they believe is roaming around its environs and when they finally come down, most of them do so with a feeling of a heavy burden having been lifted off their shoulders.

September 4 is a date especially set aside for Christians and non-Christians to go to Chigona for a holy night dedicated to prayer, worship and repentance.

Stories about the wonders brought about in people’s lives after a visit to Chigona have been told and, like the adage in the veld fire,spread to far-away lands.

It may not dawn on many people who have made the pilgrimage to Chigona to know that at the mountain’s foot is a place that earned the place its sacredness, perhaps because that place is a haven for ‘outcasts.’

And yet you cannot separate the two because for Chigona to be this famous, there had to be Mutemwa Leprosy Centre first, a leper colony where 50 patients currently reside, cut off from society.

Categorically, there are 24 post-leprosy patients, 14 adopted destitute and nine physically challenged beings.

A couple of them have been resident there since the establishment of the leprosarium in 1937, one of them being Colleta Mafuta.

The fact that she has lived this long to see a neighbourly geographical feature gain such fame as an international centre for prayer would naturally make her a good choice for a religious tour guide. And yet there she is, unnoticed, jobless and probably an obstacle in the path of people who want their souls to be saved.

“I was born here at Mutemwa in 1941 and lived under the same roof with the Martyr John Bradburne who later came in 1967,” she says pointing at a hut with the stump of a hand that has lost all its fingers.

“John (May his soul rest in peace) was such a compassionate man and since the night he was abducted and his body found three days later, life at this institution has never been the same for me,” she said painfully, retrieving the memories tattooed and tucked in her mind. The pain reflected clearly in her tired eyes.

However, Mafuta is grateful for the occasional visits, the presents and other support that has come their way through donations from thoughtful friends,

While an atmosphere of serenity engulfs the 10 hectare radius of the centre from the moment a visitor sets foot at the gate, utmost care to ensure that the inhabitants experience as much normalcy as possible is exercised. Full-time staff are in charge of the centre.

It is not until one comes across some patients trooping to the internal clinic for their medicinal dosage, or an inmate walking on his fours, that they notice something unusual about the place or its people. At least there is decent accommodation, thanks to the zest by their patroness, the late Mai Sally Mugabe, who ensured the construction of a number of housing structures.

“Help has come so much from the many quarters outside and the emphasis has been on making our patients’ lives as normal and comfortable as everyone else, at the same time drifting away from the times long gone by when they were expected to have bells tied on their necks to keep them away from the rest of society.

“But we have had challenges and they are mainly of an economic nature. This is the very reason why we have thought of supplementing what the good friends donate to us by way of the small projects that we have initiated here,” says Brother Salicio Mukuwe, who is the administrator of Mutemwa.

The Roman Catholic Church deployed him to succeed others who have been here specifically for spirituality and goodness of the place and its patients.

With a staff complement of 15 comprising of nurses and general hands, there is poultry, piggery and cow projects at the institution with a full-time manager. And thanks to a ready market obtained from the surrounding Mutoko suburbs and the Growth Point, they are able to sell produce from these projects which, however, are crying out for more capital injection. For instance, feed for the animals is sometimes not always affordable and though there is a water reservoir nearby, the lack of a transformer or engine to pump it makes life difficult for the staff as they sometimes experience power cuts due to an insufficient budget to purchase pre-paid electricity.

A small tuckshop has recently been constructed at the entrance, but is yet to be stocked. Any visitor gets the message that these disadvantaged people have not let disability get into their way of trying to be self-reliant. On September 4, the biggest number of people at one time (as many as 6 000) find time to mix and mingle with the inmates of Mutemwa who can safely be qualified as the custodians of this holy mountain situated some 146Km out of Harare in the South-Easterly direction.

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