As our Hope’s Promise Zimbabwe Connection Trip team drives from the airport in Harare to Mutare, semis swarm the highways, carting the nation’s resources off to ports in Mozambique: gold, diamonds, platinum. While the children we see along the way struggle for food to eat that day. And although they should be in school, about half of Zimbabwean children can no longer attend because their parents can’t pay fees.

UNICEF reports that 3.5 million Zimbabwean children are in urgent need of humanitarian assistance. I find myself wondering, how many diamonds would it take to feed them?

During orientation, Paul and Lydia share with us that Zimbabwean culture values belonging and connection. Being part of a family means everything. And going to school means your family loves and cares for you. So, while extended family members want to care for orphaned children, finding themselves unable to pay school fees brings worse shame than pretending the child doesn’t need help in the first place.

However, when Hope’s Promise comes alongside caregivers and offers scholarships and support from a social worker, relatives eagerly stretch their food and commit for the long haul.

During our trip, we learn about systemic causes of poverty and orphanhood. And we visit Hope’s Promise ministry partners like schools, churches, a rehab center, and skills training programs, collaborating with our ministry to help families overcome these challenges.

To visit a Hope’s Promise family, we jostle to the end of a rutted dirt road and then walk a trail through tall grasses to reach a rustic homestead. When the father passed away, the mother had to go to work at a nearby farm, leaving her blind mother and very young son in one another’s care. Her oldest son, Prince, walks 1.5 kilometers each morning to fetch water, then walks 10 kilometers round trip to school. He helps tend ducks, chickens, and a vegetable garden and the family cooks over an open fire, working hard to survive. But, because of Hope’s Promise, Prince gets to go to school.

And, on the rural fringes of Zimbabwe, not only is his innocence preserved as he spends his days studying and helping with household chores, but Prince dreams of becoming a pilot.

We end the week and return home haunted by a quote shared by Paul during orientation: “The children are always ours, every single one of them, all over the globe” (James Baldwin). Except now the children in Zimbabwe are more “ours,” because we see faces in our memories and we know their names. And we hope that one specific boy might aim for the sky and actually reach it.