Alpha Cottages in Masvingo is reputed as the ideal sanctuary for children in dire need of parental care.
The Standard people by Sukuoluhle Ndlovu
The children that end up at Alpha Cottages include orphans and others that would have been abandoned by their parents, most of them prostitutes and drug addicts.
They are referred to this home by the government’s department of Social Welfare.
Here they stay in houses which simulate proper families that have a father, mother and 10 children.
the children only leave the home after reaching the age of 18 when they are ready to face the world on their own, or if they get adopted by foster parents.
The children’s stay at the home is made possible by kind-hearted people who have dedicated their lives to caring for other people’s children for little or no gain.
One such unsung heroine is Mary Fatima Makora. At 36, Makora should be having her own children but she chose to remain single so that she could embrace abandoned children as her own.
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She sees her work as a calling from God.
“The Lord did not bless me with kids of my own but He destined me to be a mother of many children for the past 15 years,” she told The Standard.
Right now Makora is the “mother” of 10 children out of the 30 who stay at the three houses at Alpha Cottages children’s home.
“Working in an environment filled up with kids is a blessing to me.
“This is what I was destined to become; a childminder. I think this was my calling from the Lord, to give these kids love and to be there for them whenever they need me,” she said.
Makora said she was inspired to be the person she is today by the way she was raised by her own parents who accommodated orphans and even paid for their education.
“I only realised after I was grown up that some of the children whom I used to relate to as my brothers and sisters were in fact not our blood relatives.
“I got to learn that my parents gave them a place to stay and raised them as their own,” she said.
“This touched my heart and I grew up telling myself that one day I would want to do the same thing.”
Despite offering this full-time service, come monthend, Makora does not queue at the bank for a salary.
“To me, payment means nothing. If these kids are happy, I am happy too. The Lord blesses us in different ways and it does not have to be money all the time.”
But how does she make ends meet without a regular income?
“I have a small flower garden from which people come to buy flowers for weddings and church functions. I also have a vegetable garden which gets me going for both sustenance and for sale,” she said.
“So, I can manage to sustain myself, although I cannot afford many luxuries.”
While Makora is happy with her work, there is something that preoccupies her mind every day—a burning desire to run her own home for disadvantaged children.
In pursuit of that dream, she once established her own facility by the name Dzimbashanu Children’s Home in Chimanimani, but it was closed down because of financial problems.
“I hope one day I will get financial support and re-open my children’s home because that is one of the things I want to fulfil in my life.”
Makora, a Roman Catholic believer, is of the opinion that her children should have time to learn from the Bible while they are home, so she sits down with them and teaches them.
“Even though the kids come from different religious backgrounds, I always find time to teach them the bible just as happens in Sunday school and they also get to watch films to do with Christ for them to learn more,” she said.
Makora went to Bambaninga Primary School near Mashoko in Bikita before proceeding to Tagona Secondary School in Nyahunda.
The home’s administrator, Brighton Karidza said Makora was indeed an example of people that were destined in life to look after the disadvantaged of society.
He praised her work, saying it proved beyond doubt that people were created and destined for different purposes on earth.
Karidza said this while quoting the scriptures; Proverbs 31: “….but a woman who fears the Lord, she shall be praised. Give her of the fruit of her hands and let her own works praise her in the gates.”
