In all my rantings and stories, it's sometimes easy to forget that we have a serious business going on here. This week we have held our first Orphans and Vulnerable Children (OVC) Camp sponsored by The Salvation Army and UNICEF. 56 orphans from around our immediate catchment area spent five nights camping in the Mabetubwa Hills. Some had walked for eight hours to join the camp. There were no tents - just sleeping outside with mattresses and blankets. Food was cooked on firewood and the trees doubled up as toilets

The week was a mixture of counselling sessions (the first emotional help they have had regarding the loss of their parents), activity based learning activities and then just loads of games. I have managed to keep myself together for most of the time I have been here but I was extremely touched by what I heard and saw when I visited for the day on Wednesday. Many of the children talked about how they had no time to grieve for their parents, how they had been sent out into the fields to work all day by relatives, how they had just one meal a day, how they had to look after other children as often their grandparents were too old to look after them properly.

Chikankata has managed to find the money to send around 54% of the 6,000 orphans to school through the generous support of many people. This was a camp designed to look at the emotional and psychological support for children. It clearly did that. But it did much more - it allowed the children to be children. One the reasons I stuck at my last job was because I believe in a child's right to a childhood. It seems that is just as pertinent in this aspect of our work now.