Ynghild Solholm smuggled food to the village people when she found that the world help was going directly to the politicians and war veterans. She chose to stay in the country despite political disturbance, and started projects with the village people in a land where prices and inflation rise every day, where the bank systems are down and the AIDS epidemic is ravaging.

The concert

Ynghild and her friends would often sit around the café table discussing and solving the world problems. When she was 22 she arranged a support concert that raised 25 000Nok. She wanted to send them to an aid project. She heard of a Norwegian woman that worked for UNDP in Zimbabwe, at a centre for physically and mentally challenged, and decided to send the money to her.
She had already applied for half a year of from work to volunteer for an aid project, but it was hard to get a work through an organisation. She started saving money, had lots of different jobs and travelled to Zimbabwe with an address to an orphanage I South Africa and a phone number to a doctor in the Seychelles in her pocket.

Africa – a feeling, a way of life

She had never before been to Africa, but to her it was a lot of hunger, war, children with big stomachs and flies in their eyes, jungle, elephants and lions. She found that Africa was nothing like what she thought it to be.
The times were different. A meeting between the modern world and the traditional society. The woman that carried her child on her back, a bag of oranges on her head, firewood under her arm and a cell phone in her hand.
Already the third day she had gotten in contact with seven principals from different schools to create contact between schools in Africa and Norway.

The farm

She was offered a job on an agricultural project on a farm by a white farmer. The project turned out to be none existing. It was a huge farm and she experienced living close to both elephant and lions. She witnessed physical assaults towards the black workers on the farm, which was too much.

Dopota

She arrived at the village Dopota which welcomed her with open arms. She found that the school only had five teacher and seven classes. She offered to be an English teacher, and maybe she could live there? She moved inn in November 1999, when she was asked which house she wanted to live in she soon figured that she had selected the men’s house. This led to a lot of gossip, but was accepted after a while. She was raised to live in their society and was a guest at the poor’s dinner table. But they happily shared the little they had with a white guest they didn’t know.
Zimbabwe has long after the liberation in 1980 kept an apartheid system, white and black avoided each other.

Made many mistakes

She used a lot of energy to live like them for them to see her as Ynghild and not as a white person. She wanted them to show her their culture with pride and for them to equal. Trying to adapt was easy, but it was harder to understand how we can let our brothers and sisters live in poverty, while their children goes to school on an empty stomach. She understood that she would never be just like them; she had the opportunity to leave. A mother’s dream of giving her kids an education and food on the table every day would for most stay a dream. This made her humble. She could no longer teach children that passed out in class. The most important thing was to give them food.
She went home and arranged a support concert to start a food station where the children could get food at school. The food station gave 300 children a hot meal every day.

The political situation changed from day to day and it was getting harder to be an aid worker. All of the foreign workers had been evacuated months earlier, and there was only a few left in Bulawayo. She was contacted by CIO (intelligence police) and was warned by other, so she went to the city for a couple of weeks. She still felt safe, but her family and friends begged for her to come home. It was hard to say goodbye to the village. Even tough she knew she would return. She got friends to continue the delivery of food to the stations after she left.

Lived in fear

She was worried when the school money for the children came in return. And she got an e-mail from her brother in the village that said that they hadn’t seen food in three months. She knew this was political and decided to go back. She needed more money and held another support concert, but it wasn’t enough. The rescue was a journalist that wrote an article. The money came. Again she went back to Zimbabwe without knowing what to expect. She tried to tie the deliverance to one of the larger organisations. But it wasn’t possible to find out if they were delivering to her area. She got in to the country. She had the money, but the stores were empty. The government wanted full control over the food rations, so they had to get food illegally. At night they drove five hours to the village with the truck loaded with food. This was a situation that not only put her life in danger, but also the people around her. She had several helpers to smuggle the food to the village. People from the government put their life at stake to support her work.

Uppsides

With the help from Norway they got through the hunger and could even start projects they had only dreamed of. They installed electricity and water at the school. Built toilets and showers for the teachers, and dug a large pond in the village. A sewing group made school uniforms, and food stations were started at several schools. All of this created work and actuation.
The sponsorship agreement”a face” was created. She wanted to give faces to all of the statistics. The work grew, and she saw that is was necessary to create a foundation in 2003 to get help from home.

Sabona today

Sabona means “hello – I see you”. The goal is money directly to the project without to many intermediaries which creates strong bonds between the giver and the receiver. Newsletters and travel letters are sent to all the givers. It is important that the locals them selves contribute in the process. Sabona is now operating in two provinces in Zimbabwe. They have five employees and several volunteers and they reach thousands of people through the projects. Even though it is very hard to operate in Zimbabwe at this time, and they have a very tight budget, they have managed to make progress. The sewing group are almost running by it self, they give inspiration, and more sewing groups are now established. Clinics and hospitals are receiving required equipment and medicines, and they have installed water in one of the clinics. They have help funds that have helped hundreds of people with medications, hospital commitment and operations. Five vegetable gardens are created to help the elderly, orphans and HIV/AIDS patients.

Zimbabwe facts

Official name: The Republic of Zimbabwe
Capital: Harare (with 1.2million inhabitants)
Population: 12 million people
Currency: Zimbabwe dollars (ZWD)
Size: 390 580km²
Language: English, Shona and Ndebele
Climate: Because of the height large parts of the country have a subtropical climate. There are big differences between the day and night temperatures. In the summer (September to April) the day temperature may reach 35ºc, while at night it can go below 20ºc. in the winter months ( June – August) the day temperature is about 15 - 20ºc, while at night it drops to about 0ºc. It hardly ever rains, except between November and March.
President: Robert Muabe
Today Zimbabwe has the words highest inflation at 1700%, the unemployment rate is over 80% and the AIDS epidemic is ravaging. Zimbabwe will in 2007 be affected by one of the worst hunger disasters in ten years because of a dry and the political disturbance in the country.