permaculture advocate in Zimbabwe - too little/too much rain

I traveled on Friday to some family issues that I had to attend to. I found the past week to be unexpectedly busy, and I still had not done the goal that I had set for the week. When I sat in the car on Sunday traveling back home, I could feel my heart racing more and more, and I was driving myself nuts because my inner me was telling me I didn't do my set goal, therefore I wasted a week. It took me a while, but I pulled myself back into the present moment, and I  stared at the beautiful trees as we drove past them. Just watching the trees brought some sense of calmness. I had to focus and not to panic, and so I started asking myself a million "why" questions.

"Why did I not complete my task?
Because I had to sell onions.
"Why did I feel like I had to sell onions?
Because I did not want them to rot and also if we can sell all the onions in time for when we share our monthly proceeds from choumollier, we will have more to share amongst ourselves.
Why is it important to have more income by this time?
Because it keeps the available labor interested and more hopeful if they are earning decent amonuts. Once everyone I am working with experiences the idea of why being productive with a variety of products is beneficial, I will not be worried about an incentive to keep my team together. So I did not waste my week doing nothing. I SOLD ONIONS.



I decided to do one task I had put after the business plan on my list, and it's a task  which I could do in the car as I traveled. That is writing an email to CAMFED, appealing for them to consider giving my niece a second chance with her scholarship.

When I drafted my to-do list, I put my health first because  my greatest responsibility is myself and my well-being, from how I understood self-awareness. One other thing I regard with equal importance is to  find time to help anyone within my circle of influence who is more vulnerable than I am in a way that is outside their control. This does not need to be related to my plot project in any way.  Everyone is vulnerable in some area of their life, be it emotionally, materially, or spiritually. This bit of finding someone vulnerable is easy for me. It's the thing that dominated my life in the past years, of a selfless lifestyle.

I picked my niece, the one who received a CAMFED scholarship ( I  mentioned her in my earlier posts). She finished writing her final exams this month and when I taught her during her first term break, I discovered that, because she had moved a lot during her secondary level, and had been in and out of school so many times as a result of lack of school fees payment, she was not at the same level as her peers, knowledge wise. It is sometimes impossible  to pick up on ideas when one has missed some fundamental building blocks in topics early on in the school syllabus and, as a result, they come off as dull people. Since her scholarship, she was at peace because she had no more school fees issues. But for a real change in her school work, she needed some support with some basics in her subjects. She barely understood english, meaning reading on her own was still a big ask. When I experimented with her on this, teaching her some basic principles in one maths topic, even if it meant going to a level as low as primary, she caught on well and proved to be a very intelligent girl with a strong willed character. When she realised she could catch on things just like everyone else, she started waking up at 3 am. to do her homework. When she went back to her home, we tried online lessons, and it worked for a bit, but the network made it more strenuous than it was productive, and we let this go. She started going to her teachers outside her normal classes to get help, and this too didn't last long because there is so much of a person's free time you can take before you became annoying.

School shields her from ending up in a marriage that she will regret, and as she gains confident in her school work she will also be healing from a series of experiences that made her believe she was not good enough in life. Now that she has written, if she fails to pass her first O-level exams trial, that's it for her, that's why I  have decided to write an email to CAMFED, appealing for them to consider her for an A-level scholarship even if she does not make it this time (which seems to be something they do not usually do from what I gathered from my niece). My plan is, if she fails, I can give her classes like I did with my other niece and find a way of paying for her to register to re-write her O-level exams. That way, there won't be any school fees to talk about next year. If she passes the second time around CAMFED can then take her back. What I know is she still needs to be in school and I cannot afford to pay for her school fees, after she finishes and passes her O-level, and writing an email to CAMFED can be the solution.
I finished the email and talked to my niece to find out if she would want to stay in school if there is that option, and I could tell she was so excited at the idea. She told me her aunt from her father's side was going to help her get into a course which will make her start working with dead bodies, something like an undertaker, but she had a different word for it. I am totally against this, I think she has experienced enough dead people in her very little time on earth. She deserves a big break from them.
What's left is for me to get in touch with the people she who were helping her and talk to them first before I can send the email.

Things are shaping up now and getting back on track. I have started looking into what a business plan is so that I can start working on mapping out the peanut butter producing project. The motive is for it to grow from being just a struggling  business to a stable and profitable one, my benefit is that it will be my steady source of income, which I now need to grow my project at the plot. This  business was started by the owner in 2005, and he is still at it. It is not doing too well, despite the fact that his product is loved by people. The one thing I find solid about this business is that the owner has managed to keep this business from sinking, and he has done it all on his own, and he has not swayed from his vision. I find this quality to be a hidden treasure, which is so rare to find in the economy we have. He has gone against so many odds, and I see an amazing opportunity here, and I only need to understand what business planning takes and who knows how far this business can go.

I went to the plot, and I  found Kumbi weeding. There is a potted grape vine I left for mai Kumbi to plant two weeks ago, and it's still in its pot. I was impressed to find Kumbi in the field, but it's either our labor is slowly becoming overwhelmed or I need to improve on the day-to-day tasks.

One thing I am learning is that we need to work to make this place sustain two families. My family needs to carry it's load and mai Kumbi's theirs. There was a great distortion to my understanding of what being good willed meant. No one can help anyone with something they do not have, and I  now know better. I have to find easier and faster ways for us to do our tasks, and that way, we can still live our lives and also enjoy being stewards of this piece of land.

We have a few chickens that are caged, and I am thinking of having the cage fixed so that it can open and close at the bottom, and it can be wheeled from one point to the other (a chicken tractor). That way, it can be pulled in between the maize rows, which have spaces that are wide enough to accommodate it when the maize plants are still small. This will help with the weeding problem when the chickens peck and scratch at things.

I actually went to the plot to feed the banana plants. They have been at our place, but we hardly harvest anything. The plant is a very good source of mulching material, and we really need to mulch our beds frequently. The amount of mulch we put in our beds vanishes into thin air, and for most part of the year, the soil will be bare. So, instead of adding a task of going out of the yard to look for mulch, I will encourage the growth of all the banana plants. We can enjoy the fruits and, most of all, harvest a lot of mulching material. I am taking advantage of the rain, which will take care of the water requirements of the plants. I managed to feed the biggest patch of bananas, I am left with two areas, and I will schedule a day for them.

I am displeased greatly to realise that my niece is the one who chose a mortician course. I do not have any disrespect for people who do this. If anything, I have the utmost respect for them because they choose to help people with something that is difficult to volunteer to do. It's just I am highly uncomfortable around deceased people it's hard for me to wrap my mind around her choosing this. She had a wide range of courses to choose from and when we asked to find out what drove her choice, she said she just wanted to know what is involved but she does not want to do this as a career. What is making me angry is the fact that she had told me it was her aunt who made her do this, and this was potentially going to cause a rift between her aunt and myself. I don't know what our plan with her is anymore because she says one thing to me and another thing behind my back. I asked what she wants us to do (me and her) to help her to build a future that she wants, and she has given me nothing. I don't know what to do, but I  know I am not going to force anything on her. Maybe she doesn't even want to proceed with school, I don't know anymore.

Alongside my tasks for this week, I am helping plan for my sister's birthday. It is definitely out of my comfort zone, but I like how things are shaping up. I only have today to get things together. And guess what, I am the person on the ground, something which would have not been possible if I was still at a formal job. Proving that this regenerative route has the potential to create time for family to be truly there for each other.

*I  looked for a market for mint, and I found a potential buyer. I will see how this goes by the end of the day.

Oh my God!!! mint was bought..!!!  I just tried my luck, I have seen it in big supermarkets being sold but not anywhere else, I didn't think we actually could sell it...

My sister's birthday celebration was a great success, she is so happy and I am glad we did it. Initially I  was against the idea because we went for a small holiday and I  thought we had agreed that the trip was kind of  an early birthday celebration for my sister, because anything else after the trip was not going to make any financial sense. I realised that it's very important for my sister to celebrate her birthday on the day and that's how come we ended up going for a picnic. She had started buying herself balloons so as to celebrate her own birthday, I don't think there was any choice for us there, but to celebrate one way or the other. I really liked everything and I want more of such moments.

The day after the party, on Sunday, we accompanied our other sister who was going back to her place. When we came back, there was a dog sitting at one end of our durahall. We were not bothered because it was not in our way. After a few hours, we heard our dogs barking ferociously by the gate, and when we looked, the dog outside had shifted, and it was laying by the gate, unmoved by the noise from our dogs. We tried everything to get it to move away, and it wouldn't. We had to close our dogs up to stop the noise. During the night, we had to let our dogs out from the back, and the 'stray' dog was still at our gate. When we woke up, it was there. It's a german shepherd, by the way. No one responded to a message I sent in our community group asking for the owner. As the morning progressed I was liking the dog more and more, and I tried giving it food, and it only drank water and did not touch the food. We had bones from the party and I gave it these and it ate, but they were just a few. Our dogs are not too picky. We give them thick mealie meal porridge and soya chunks , which is a very affordable diet. We sometimes give them sawdust meat, once in a while. Now I was looking at this beautiful dog which would not move from our gate, and wasn't eating. I had to buy some  sawdust to see if it would eat, and it did. We have decided we will feed it as long as it is at our gate, I am secretly hoping it will end up being ours, though realistically speaking, it's diet seems to be beyond our budget. We have just switched on one of our refrigerators, which we have not used in a while to try and store the sawdust we bought so that it can stretch (I hope one of the fridges works). I literally added only sawdust soup to the thick porridge for the stray dog for it to eat. I had to give the few solid sawdust to our dogs because it felt unfair that I haven't been buying sawdust meat for our dogs, and yet here I am buying some for a stray dog. I just feel like the dog's situation surpasses financial logic. Someone has to take care of it. I have seen it once or twice in the past months, walking in the streets with no one. It has probably no home. There are so many homes around with yards that are a few hundred square meters apart, and this dog chose us. I want it.

The first thing that came to my mind when I woke up today was the dog by the gate, and when I went to check for it, I saw it laying peacefully. Our other dogs are not welcoming it at all. It is also difficult to know what the new dog's actions mean, and it is getting more and more difficult to negotiate with it, for me to get back inside the gate when I go out. It knows where the latch is, and when I move towards the gate, it temporarily blocks the latch area. I don't know if there are any service providers that are trained to deal with dogs that can take him in, to sell or donate to people, after they have checked his health.

I have to travel for a funeral, an aunt of mine lost her husband and I am likely going to be the only one from my family who can go to support her. I went to the peanut butter guy's workplace, and we discussed at length things that can be done to improve the production process.

I am yet to talk to someone who will change the birds' cage that's at the plot so that the birds can be moved in and out of the field. I will see to most of the things when I get back.

Hi Rufaro, are you able to watch videos?
if yes, here you can get quite some information on cavies, allowing you to produce meat without buying grains, especially since you had issues with dying chickens

[youtube] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7JWjrMOgQYo[/youtube]

Thanks Hans, yes I am able to watch videos, I will look this up.

My trip was meant to be for supporting a family member in their very low moment, but it ended up being giving to me. The funeral I went to delayed, because the grave was so difficult to dig. The program was supposed to start at 9 am, but they were not done digging. When they finished it was almost 12 noon and apparently its not advised to bury a person at noon, so we had to wait until after lunch. When everything was finished it was too late for me to travel back home, so I slept over at one of my uncle's places. We went round his place, as he was showing us around and I saw a lot of banana plants with a lot of shoots. I was given some for my sister's project, my sister had seen them in her hometown and they were going for $5each, and I got them for free.

My uncle, who hosted me after the funeral, stays in Harare, the capital city. When I was leaving to go back home, my sister told me she was paying for us to go and watch a Christmas play which will be showing in Harare, so I had to sleep in the big city again for an extra day. I was, of course, excited because Christmas used to be my favorite holiday, and to do something related to it feels good. I found a cheap place to sleep for the night, which is a hostel. I met a very young boy whom I found interesting. He is in the country all by himself working on some papers so that he can work in Zimbabwe. He is American, and he said he wanted to experience a different life during the beginning of his working years, and then he would go back home. His courage is what drew my attention. He has been to so many places and how he was describing the number of jobs he applied to across the world, for him to get to work outside his country,  added on to my growing realization that first world work ethics are so different from what I had imagined. The guy looks very young, but the level of responsibility he has is very high. He is so comfortable in his skin, and when I was talking to him, it's as if something cleared. When I went to sit outside by myself, I could suddenly tell the differences in how different people were speaking, both for locals and  those that are not. The people who work at the hostel are very humble to an extent where the politeness crosses the line to being timid. One local guy, who was a guest as well, had so much freedom as he spoke, and he sounded like he was not asking for permission to be himself. I want this way of living where you can respect others but at the same time you don't automatically feel you have to serve people or that something is wrong with what you are wearing or how you look or speak, everytime another person comes into your space.

The guy who visited our country has nothing to do for the whole weekend and there is this play I am going to. I feel that no one should ever feel lonely anywhere in this world, whether you are around people you know or not, I am going to invite him to join us and I hope the tickets are affordable for him, if not, I am fighting my thoughts. One part of me says it's no coincidence we got to talk, I automatically become his host with some limits, and the other thought is saying in this world, people mind their own business so I should not be bothered. I hope I do the right thing because I can only live this moment once, where I get to determine what kind of world I want to live in.

I am glad I ended up inviting my dorm mate to the musical, and I didn't even need to worry about paying for his ticket. I am now going back home, and from just this random encounter, I have an even increased drive to get objectives and goals done. The things the young man mentioned he had done and the skills he possessed made me realize there is a lot more that can be done in a day than I am already doing, so I need to work on this.

My plan for today is to plant some chillie plants at the plot, which my sister got from a friend of hers. Then, I  also need to fill up a section of the water harvesting pit to allow the banana plant, which is inside the pit, to grow its roots on a bigger area. It looks stunted, and I think it's because there is not enough growing space for it.
Getting out of the gate is becoming more and more difficult for me. Our visitor dog still stays at our gate and when I am getting out of the gate, he/she jumps at me and I do like him ( I think he is male, I never can tell) a lot,  but I don't know what his actions mean and I get into a panic mode when he does this, I am not sure how things will be like if we carry on like this. When I was leaving to go to the plot, he walked me for quite a distance, and I was trying to tell him to go back home, and he wasn't having it. He even barked at me, and it really freaked me out, so I screamed, and he backed away a little and again started following me. He only went back home when I pretended to pick a stone up. I called the SPCA people so that we can get help with him and also for them to give us guidance if adopting him is an option. They said if the dog is not listening to me its probably because I do not have a commanding voice. The dog is better when my sister is talking to it, I don't know what I am going to do because we really want to adopt it.

I managed to finish both the tasks yesterday. The water harvesting pit has not collected water for the season yet, but a few hours after I left the plot, it rained heavily, I am hoping it's going to rain enough to fill the  pit up. There is a lot of building that's been happening since I dug the water harvesting pit, and it has resulted in changes occurring to how the water flows into our yard. I hope we will still get enough to fill up the pit, like it used to be in the past years.

The chilies I planted are already big plants. I want to see if they will grow to give us some chillies, I think they will. We shared the money we got from selling the onions as well as mint and it was enough for us to split between our two families and together with our regular income from the choumollier beds, the money we received can buy us a small grocery for our families. All this while, mai Kumbi has been staying at the plot mainly for the house, and now we are making baby steps towards her staying because she can actually earn some income at the place. The main reason why I grew the big chillie plants is so that we won't have to wait long before it can give us fruits. The man who bought mint was asking about chillies, so since we only have choumollier to sell fir his month, because the onions are as good as finished, if I start adding other products, we can have a consistent amount of income that can allow us to buy some groceries for ourselves permanently. If we achieve this, we will then upgrade to earning money that covers household basics.
The other product we are waiting for is beans, we hope there is a month when our income will be cushioned by the bean sales.

My fathers, that I spoke about earlier will be coming in the next week. We have managed to have the roof leaks fixed and now we are painting two rooms that people spend most time in.

I know there are bigger issues with our house structurally, but it's really important for the house to be presentable for a temporary period because it's not going to be what I say that will matter, but it's how we live that is going to leave a great mark. We have not reached the stage of fixing our house yet, but we are borrowing the future idea of an esthetically pleasing home and we will show case it in the present moment. It is possible to live a very decent lifestyle in my neighborhood and as a regenerative farmer, if we take good care of our environment and this is the picture I am going to try and paint. We are lucky because we had a lot of onions to sell for the month, and we are using this money together with  some help from our other sister to fix the house, at least the lounge and dining area.

We had some peanut butter deliveries to do yesterday, and most of the customers were the elderly women who watched us grow. I took time yesterday to watch how others are around the dog that's outside our gate. They are so calm, and he doesn't jump at them. I tried this, and it's working, I can now get out of the gate without too much obstruction from the dog. He still jumps at me, but the actions are not as much as before. When we went to sell peanut butter, two random people at different times talked to us about this dog, and both of them had the same advice. Apparently, most people who saw the post I sent in the community WhatsApp group are convinced that this is not just an ordinary dog. They think that there is an evil spirit that was put in the dog, and the moment we take this dog in is when we give control to whoever sent it. Both of them advised that we find a way of getting rid of the dog. One of the things we were told to do is to take coarse salt  and throw a lot of it at the dog  commanding it to leave us alone. Because of how no one knows for sure things that happen in the spirit I am not going to disregard what these women said, nor hold the things they said to be facts, I am going to find a neutral thing to do. The SPCA team I called said they do not have transport to come and look at the dog, so they will get in touch with me whenever they can come for it. My neighbor said he saw someone who was looking for his dog and he  gave him the description of 'our' dog. It would be ideal if we could get the dog a home. After what these women were saying, adopting the dog is out of the question now. We will continue to care of it from outside the gate, and I will try and actively look for the guy who claimed to be the owner of the dog.