permaculture advocate in Zimbabwe - too little/too much rain

What we see now in people who go to stay and work outside the country is exactly what my mum’s generation saw in people who would visit back home from town. They looked smarter, more confident and they seemed to be enjoying much of what life offered, and all of them would look down upon rural life. It became a dream to get out of rural life and go into an urban one. Indeed, it was not disappointing when my parents eventually had their own place in town. It was truly more convenient, they had tap water, electricity, had to put in little physical work to have food on the table, nice clothes and the like. They had decent secure jobs and things used to be like clockwork, you were sure of how tomorrow would be, as long as you continued to work hard.

The majority of mum’s peers took in their siblings and sent them to school, because they wanted them to have this great, easy life. For those family members they could not take in, they would send things back home to help with basic needs. The economy was that good, to enable a new family, to take in extended family, take care of people in the rural homes, while building their nuclear family from scratch. Or was it?
Of the siblings who were taken in, those who made it, afterwards concentrated on their own nuclear families (not that this is a problem but I will explain how it was going off trail for the sibling who took care of others). Some of them never quite got comfortable with town life, so they moved back home adding onto the family that needed to be supported.
Rural homes, in my grandparents’ time, were considered to be the actual homes and towns were just work places usually for men. Rarely would men move their families into town, they would go back home to visit, once, twice or thrice a year. Although some financial support would come from husbands when they would visit, it is clear, judging from the number of times they visited, that whatever work was being done in the rural homes, was taking care of most of the daily needs.  This changed however.

By the time mum and her peers started working in towns, they needed to support family back home, for a number of their basics. So many things had changed but also, the fact that whether those able bodied family members worked or not, their basics were met, could have also crippled them. Instead of assistance helping them have an easier start to building a more stable life, I think they started seeing themselves as permanent dependents, meaning, even though they could sometimes make good incomes, they were not be able to see their capability, instead they would wait to get basics catered for and find other things to do with their own generated incomes. At family levels, rural home life became stagnant. In changing times, the way things were done, in houses and fields were the same, nothing was being improved in the equipment that was being used, water sources... What was changing though, was the number of dependents, as the rural based siblings, started their own nuclear families.

Back to the sibling who made it, moved to town and started to take care of others. For any system to be continuous and sustainable, what goes out should balance what comes in directly or any other way. From the time my mum’s generation started working, they have been giving. Those siblings who made it could have helped indirectly by being younger and fresh labour into a working economy, which could have maintained steady flow of revenue, that could have helped stabilize retirement packages for those going into retirement (this could have been mum’s generation now receiving to balance out what they gave in their working times). But the economy is not working so retirement packages are not even close to covering anyone’s basic needs. Still another way that these siblings could have balanced out the “going out, coming in” equation, could have been remembering that an older brother or sister helped them out and just look out for them in case they needed support which they could offer. Life has changed and more is required to prove success and also to send children to really good schools. Outside the impacts of politics on our current state, I also believe that we lack a selfless nature that was possessed by mum’s generation.

They could have simply sent their own children to better schools, move to even greater neighborhoods than they settled for and saved up a lot for their retirement. They experienced something good, and wanted it not only for themselves but also for others, so they sacrificed.  We could learn from them how much to sacrifice and balance this, but also we need to learn how sacrificing has improved so many things, as so many people got exposed to vast opportunities, especially education.

The giving did not end there, as they still had the responsibility of taking care of their own children.

To be continued…

My generation got lucky early in life.  As long as it was within our parents’ capacity we had basics taken care of. When it was time for us to start working, there were not enough jobs and it is hard for basics to be cared for, from a basic salary. Personally I was one of the very few lucky ones, when I finished school. A lot of people moved out of the country, which seems like the only logical thing to do, if you are looking for a stable steady life.
“Fortunately” most of my peers send money back home to take care of their parents. Fortunately in quotes because as good as money can be, to help one get by, it is not enough. A family with relatives outside the country lives better, they eat well, dress well and their homes are furnished well. What this money cannot do is to protect these families from instabilities at a national or city level, for example, clean water shortages, if a town has low water reserves, or electricity if there is no power (some houses have solar systems set up, but these are very few) or proper health care if as a nation it is poor. That education that was invested in, could do a lot more if it is also applied onto resources which are available geographically to allow for some kind of stability. Houses can be bigger, number of cars has increased, but the quality of life, looking at basics like good sanitary, healthy food…, has deteriorated. Those working out of the country, can make life comfortable only to a certain extent, but they also have their own bills to pay, and lives to live where ever they are.

Unlike with my mum’s generation, our generation cannot help as many people as they could, yet the number of people to be assisted has increased. There are those who stayed behind in the rural areas and their children, our parents and our siblings (though nowadays there is not that much involvement in each other’s lives, especially financially). With all that is going on there is never enough to set aside for proper retirement. I wonder if this way of helping each other, will be sustainable in the future. We saw a change already in the way those in diaspora used to help. They would send clothes, school fees for so many people within a clan... After 2010, the amount of help started reducing and now most of it is focused on biological parents and to a certain extent siblings.

For those that could not go out of the country, they barely get paid enough to see them through the month and most of the unemployed are still living in their parent’s homes (my mum’s generation keeps giving even as they are retiring). The opportunities of working outside are not as easy as before and it only makes sense, because where ever we are going to seek employment, there are people there too, and we will be adding onto the competitors for their existing resources. It is as if we are creating a huge vacuum that sucks anything that comes into its vicinity. We use up our resources, get people from outside to send us money and we use this money to import goods for basic use also from outside. What it means is the space we occupy, our energy, our time and other resources are not of much benefit to us, which is what we need to change.

Again looking at all other aspects besides politics which we might have little control of, we could do a lot to start benefiting from our space, time, energy and other resources. If we manage to make our homes habitable, stable and sustainable, it could solve so many issues that are affecting us and also other people indirectly. For example, it could lead to development of steady jobs and if things are more stable it lessens the dependency of families on those working outside the country, and even lowers the need to seek for jobs outside. It will also be an alternative place to come back to, if things do not work well in the diaspora.

Judging from a trend that is about to repeat itself, I think the greatest legacy is to equip each other, with the ability to extract benefits from surroundings or nature in a direct or indirect way, in a regenerative way. That way it lessens the pressures that come with the scramble for resources.

The maize field is now looking good.  I am still experimenting with the solar oven.  l replaced the glass which was too small with a plastic I found which can stand heat upto 120°C. It
had been cloudy in the past days and I tried it out yesterday, still it did not cook well, I am trying again for a longer period.

Consider doing reflective side flanges for the solar cooker. The more reflective surface you have the more heat you're going to get.

We did it!!! We baked and it worked. I had to turn the box around to keep the flap at an angle that would trap the sun's rays.

It is such a wonderful achievement!

We continued the talk on success and our conclusion to help us understand where we currently are, which will  help us determine what we need to do to achieve our goals follows:

The quality of life in general is deteriorating and not much effort has made significant progressive change at a family level. E.g. the investment  made in education has limited benefit to the direct growth or improvement of the local society. Income generating projects in homesteads are an expence rather than a profit. It all comes down to failure in assessing whether an action is beneficial or not. There is also lack of enough knowledge on alternative lifestyles or income generating activities.

The measurable goals and objectives we came up with are
1) creating a system where there are high chances of getting beneficial results from any effort exerted I.e. concentrating on effectiveness.

2)building an environment as fair as possible, with each person getting a reward/ benefit for his/ her effort.

We have had our first monthly review of the year. Things are promising. We isolated the chicken project, because it is one project my mum is deciding whether to continue or not and  since we bought most of the feed already we were able to appreciate better the inflow from selling chomolia. This alone takes care of all the expenses (excluding the chicken feed). We need to keep this up in the next months, with some improvement on other areas, it will be safe to say we would have succeeded in creating a retirement for mother independent from the need to financially rely on extra support for basic survival (with all things being equal). This will mark the beginning of fulfilling her wish. The first legacy that she can leave is a place that can take care of itself.

We defined specific goals and we both have separate responsibilities for the coming month, to help with accountability. Mother has to decide how the chicken project will be continued, whether she thinks now is a good time to keep this number of chickens or not. I have to come up with a way of planting chomolia suckers in the heat without the need to replant, as we spent too much time planting chomolia in the past year and we still are. Both the chickens and chomolia planting has made so much effort from last year be in vain and we want to change this.

We have won with the nursing of chomolia suckers. There is nothing new and special we did, except to focus more on our probable solution and put all our attention while trying it out. We would grow suckers directly into beds and it was normal and accepted for the leaves on the suckers to brown, leaving only the tiny central leaf in it's forming stage. This would keep the plant alive until it formed its roots.

Sometime last year or even before I tried a nursery but either the things would dry up or be destroyed by our dogs. This time l reserved enough time to monitor and attend to the suckers and we succeeded. With the new method, most leaves remain green and a few turn yellow. The space that needs watering is so small making it very manageable.

So far the ones we put as an experiment are showing signs of life and the method has already been adopted at the plot. We will wait for a month before transplanting and in the meantime we will work on the soil within the beds.

It has been raining consistently since the end of January. We decided to start with the front yard, which now had so much weeds coming through the stones that I put earlier. We did the same thing, talking about exactly what we want to achieve and we want

a portion just after the lawn that does not grow anything, with minimum maintenance

Lawn and flower area that stays green with minimum watering requirements

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So again I am adding more stone which I am getting from yet another pile of rubble that was dumped by the road side. I want to first try to achieve weed suppression using most available and least costly material and also a pile of rubble along the side of the road is a sure attraction for dumping of garbage in the future. I decided to first put cardboard boxes, also using waste material, to stop the weeds for a while. If this time it doesn't work, the next step is to buy quarry stone, which seems to be working just fine on other people's yards.  And this time is the best time to see this, the weeds we pulled out end of last week are already coming out. As or the lawn area, we have decided to put succulents in place of the lawn and the flowers as they are more drought resistant. We have not picked on the actual plants we will use.  

We now have more than 9 new trees successfully growing at the plot and it's exciting. Some are of the same type.

We are now looking for plants that we can use for decorative purposes that are drought resistant to replace the lawn and randomly picked flowers that we have. A nursery in town has a limited number and they do not have the names of the plants, which shows how unpopular they are.  

We have also been going through the decision making process, to add onto steps in being more effective. It directed me to history, it is a dream to the majority of us to relocate to a first world country and I wanted to know how stability in the developed world came to be. From the few articles so far, there are periods centuries ago (l started with European history) that are a mirror reflection of what l see today. I believe one little privilege of lagging behind is, if we are willing to learn, we can avoid some of the mistakes that were done as people worked on improving their living conditions.

Rufaro Makamure wrote:... From the few articles so far, there are periods centuries ago (l started with European history) that are a mirror reflection of what l see today. I believe one little privilege of lagging behind is, if we are willing to learn, we can avoid some of the mistakes that were done as people worked on improving their living conditions.

Great observation, Rufaro! I totally agree with you on this. Here in so-called 'developed countries' many mistakes are made, we as permaculturists try to heal the damage done. In some regions in 'the third world' these mistakes are not (yet) made. It's possible to find a new kind of development without having to heal any damage.

It is a really good morning today. I woke up to these beautiful images of my sister and my sister inlaw showing off their harvest. There is always some fresh energy that comes when there is a tiny bit of light that, changes, no matter how small are happening.

Getting hands dirty growing food, had become unpopular unless if it involved a commercial area. Seeing these two proud like this is a huge stride.

Part of our deliberate inclusion of family in what we are developing at home has been to share most things on WhatsApp and this is where the images were posted, which will certainly be contageous depending on how we handle it, thereby cementing a certain way of thinking which is pro an abundant lifestyle..... exciting times ahead....!!!

We have harvested just less than a quarter of our maize. All along, we would convert our yield into monetary term, this year we will do it differently. We took no money, from ourselves or from friends in the growing of maize throughout the whole season, which is so great. Our approach now is that, we will not buy any mealie meal, until our maize is finished. That way we can determine whether the whole maize growing is worth our time and energy, if we last three months and beyond. Anything less than three months will be a loss to us, because maize growing demands roughly three months of our time and energy.

We also finally planted the chomolia suckers, the wait seemed endless. It was easier keeping busy at growing suckers every weekend, with no certainty of whether they would grow or not. Having suckers in a small space felt like we were not doing anything. Now we can practically compare the benefits of nursing vs directly planting in beds.

I found a paper beautifully written, that l have started discussing with mother to help understand a little about economics (starting with our own country), the long term aim is to reduce subjective perspectives on poverty and its causes and have a more objective understanding of our situation. I have attached the link and l will share our discussions as we discuss. After appreciating where we stand in terms of how our resources are benefiting us (or not) as a country, l can then use other nations which were once in economic crisis but managed to improve, and from these we can try to come up with principles that we can scale down to family level.

https://googleweblight.com/i?u=https://www.researchgate.net/publication/249820554_Historical_Perspective_on_Zimbabwe%27s_Economic_PerformanceA_Tale_of_Five_Lost_Decades&hl=en-ZW

We are almost done with reading the paper on 'Historical Perspective on Zimbabwe's Economic Performance' and we analyze as we go. It seems like there are a bunch of things that have affected growth of the country, that connect with basic decision making, that can also apply to individual choices we make. Some of these decision making habits have affected us in our attempt to come up with a sustainable plot.

Last Sunday was the first time we actually watched on the news the impacts the virus has had and it is alarming. It reinforced how we are now global citizens, literally. A small action by anyone anywhere can have an influence that we cannot correctly imagine, positively or negatively. As I listened to efforts being put by all the people across the globe, I only wish there is more we could offer as input too, to help others, other than try to keep the disease from spreading. Looking at our national GDP Graphs that fall in the negative zone, in the paper we are reading, it is clear some people from the global community supported us as a nation, and maybe still are, and we are so sorry a lot of families have been affected badly.