The Grandmothers on the Friendship Bench — Epoche A2
The bench outside the clinic Outside the clinic near my street in Harare there is a plain wooden bench under a tree. For years I thought people sat there because the queue was long. I was wrong. The bench is the treatment. It is called a Friendship Bench. On it sits a grandmother — a real one, grey hair, strong opinions — trained to listen and to help a person take one heavy problem apart into smaller pieces. You do not need a letter or money. You sit down, you talk, and you come back; the talks usually run over about six visits. The idea began here in Harare in 2006, with a doctor named Dixon Chibanda. Zimbabwe then had only about a dozen psychiatrists for the whole country, so he trained the people every neighbourhood already trusted: the grandmothers. Researchers later compared people who used the bench with people who got the usual care, and the bench clearly won. In Shona the trouble itself has its own name: kufungisisa — thinking too much. Hundreds of grandmothers now work on benches across Zimbabwe, and the idea has been copied in other countries. Two years ago my aunt sat on the bench, after her shop closed. She still greets her bench grandmother at the market — loudly, and from far away.