Father Tim Peacock-The Legendary Missionary
By Tapfuma Machakaire 14/10/2022
A smartly dressed elderly white man appeared odd in the VIP tent at a function deep in the rural areas of Hwange district Matabeleland North Province of Zimbabwe.
For a visitor to the district, the guest certainly stood out as the only white person at the event held on 21 September 2022 at Nechishala Secondary School, Chachachunda village.
The venue of the rare event was barely five kilometres from the homestead of Chief Hwange, who apparently was the guest of honour at the function.
Throughout the four-hour long function which included traditional rituals and dances, the “special” guest sat quietly following proceedings which were predominantly in the indigenous Nambiya language.
The man popularly known as Father Tim is no stranger to the communities of Hwange; he has lived with them for 35 years. In addition to catering for the spiritual needs of the communities, Father Tim is a development practitioner whose contribution towards the positive changes in some parts of the district, may surpass that of the local authority and government combined.
Father Tim who was deployed by the Roman Catholic Church to St John’s Catholic Mission in Simangani ward of Hwange rural in January 1985 is the man behind the construction of 10 schools and 24 church buildings. Many visitors to this part of Hwange have marvelled over these numerous uniform like stone-walled church structures in the area.
The function that Father Tim was attending in September was the commissioning of a girl’s boarding house at Nechishala secondary. This is one of the schools that Father Tim has helped construct with financial aid from his friends in his home country, Iceland. World Vision Hwange Area Programme assisted with the construction of the girl’s dormitory at Nechishala.
The event was also a farewell occasion from the World Vision team which had been implementing projects in the area for the past 16 years.
Hwange district has many satellite schools that were built to curb the long distances that children had to walk through the wild life infested forests to the nearest school. Most such institutions adopted the concept of bush boarding schools where children stay in shacks or use classrooms as hostels.
While Father Tim made significant contributions to the development of new schools, he has been at the forefront of the construction of decent boarding facilities, particularly for girls who were vulnerable to abuse due to the deplorable living conditions at school.
Father Tim has also spearheaded the construction of small dams and establishment of community nutrition gardens in the area. At the peak of the Covid 19 pandemic, he provided personal protective equipment to several schools in the district. Due to the constant maintenance work that Father Tim undertakes on culverts and small bridges on the strip road leading to Simagangani ward on the border with Zambia, parts of the district which would have been unreachable during the rain season have remained accessible.
“That man is getting old now. He has done so much for this district and I feel someone should have started thinking of a way of recognising his work either in the form of a statue or anything along those lines,” said Lovemore Nyoni, the World Vision Hwange Area Programme Manager.
Father Tim Peakock was born in England on January 1, 1948. He became a priest in April 1978 and was deployed as a parish priest to St John’s mission in Hwange in 1985.
In a newsletter he published in July 2018 Father Tim details some of the development projects he has undertaken in Hwange. He also reflects on his 33 years of service in Hwange. The long serving priest is open about the fact that he, like most men, had intended to marry and bring up a family. But instead, his family has become the poor communities of Hwange district.
“Since the day I decided to become a priest, back in April 1978, when I was working in Iceland, I have never looked back. Thank God I have never doubted my vocation, though certainly the challenge before deciding to become a priest was the attraction to the marriage institution. But in spite of my attraction to marriage I have never felt frustrated as a priest. God has kept me very occupied over those years!”
“While a priest cannot experience the intimacy of having a wife, and watching children grow, nevertheless, God compensates in so many ways. In a sense all 2,200 of my parishioners are my children, or at least I can say they are my spiritual children.”
“Over the last 33 years I have watched so many of my parishioners grow up, get married, have children, and later become grandparents!”
Rutendo Mapfumo a journalist based in Hwange town who is among the few scribes to have documented the work of Father Tim says the man believes that he was ordained to change the lives of the communities in the rural areas of Hwange.
“As a result of his hard work and the zeal to improve the lives of these people, buildings have sprouted where makeshift classrooms and offices once stood,” wrote Mapfumo.
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