permaculture advocate in Zimbabwe - too little/too much rain

Today, I will  be moving around town looking for Asher. I did not tell my sisters that I will be putting some of my time to look for him. I know it's not really "my business" to be looking for him, from how we are supposed to be doing things, but from how I view things, we are each other's business. So from the time I can bank, from how I am doing things, Asher deserves some effort and time because I believe we are all each other's business, if we want to create a world which is not a lonely place. The child was said to have been seen in town a number of times just walking around in the clothes he left home with and without bathing. So my plan is to just walk in town looking for him and if I fail to find him at least I would have tried.

I was not lucky, but I passed by the peanut butter business owner's place to share pictures with him since he is in town, he said a child was looking for work and he found it very odd because he has never had children wanting to work at his place. The child is around Asher's age, and I am hoping it's him. He once went with his aunt and he heard that people are employed to recycle bottles for packing peanut butter   so he knows there is work like that there. The peanut butter business owner was skeptic about giving the kids a job but he had just told them to come on Wednesday as he was battling with his mind, what the right thing to do was. So I am now waiting to hear from him on Wednesday and also to understand what Asher's family is really doing to find their child.

Last night was a very difficult one for me. I got a call and was told that what I did to help Kumbi's situation is potentially going to be canceled. I felt so helpless with no hope and I needed anything to help me know what to do. I don't know what to do yet, but one of the ladies from my neighborhood, from nowhere, shared her life story and how things do work out if we strive to do good and we only need to remain persistent and hopeful. I had not told her about my situation, she just said these things in general. At the moment I  feel like the protection I thought would be there for people as we develop, might not be there, and this is because of what I am seeing with Kumbi and Asher.

I reflected over my attempt to create a system , which is people and environment centered, that runs parallel to the existing one and it seems it is an epic fail. How do we lose a child...? I met with mai Kumbi telling her to find another place to live and she has nowhere to go. I now feel like I am not the one to help her with this even if she says she is going to be doing a lot of things differently.

My sister surprisingly is protecting my project and she says I am in an emotional state. I couldn't believe it when she was defending the staying of mai Kumbi at the plot. A few days ago, they were on my case with this issue. It's been so many years of me trying to see if we cannot live abundantly and I still believe there is enough to go round for everyone, but what it takes to get to this is what I don't know anymore.

Asher has not been found yet,  but there have been more than 3 reports of him having been seen. I hope he decides to go back to his aunt.

With everything at the plot, the set up is good enough for a family to survive at a subsistence level. This time I have taken a step back and instead of leading the way, the guys at the plot are. The vegetable we have been growing is what's grown by almost every house hold in their backyard, so I told mai Kumbi to apply her knowledge of growing this vegetable and prove they can grow things, as opposed to me dictating the pace. This way I believe they will be more accountable to the outcome of their efforts and the feeling that was there,  where the guys at the plot were under the impression that they were the needy ones and I was okay will be erased. I  was also specific about no use of fertilizers. So for the next months I am a spectator of things and the place has to benefit mai Kumbi and her family as well as my siblings and my self as the owners of the place.

I am preparing to host various children from my family from April going onwards, mainly to share what I got from our school system when it was so much betterthan it is now. I hope I can help the kids develop confidence, where the setting is as if it's so as to crush their confidence. So I will share progress at the plot as well as my preps for the kids and what I think might matter during their stay.

I have started a garden at home, which I have nursed onions in, from seed I harvested from the plot more than a year ago. If mai Kumbi and her son, manage to prove that they can grow things on their own, we can grow the onions on a big space, so that we also grow in terms of income.

I borrowed the keyhole irrigation idea, so I have a new use of my kitchen waste. Everything I used in making the bed I got from around the house. Organic matter was from the banana plant and some subsoil came from underpinning which was done on our house which had developed a really bad crack and was fixed during the rainy season. Then for top soil I used all the soil I was collecting as I was trying to grow seedlings as well as from under the organic matter by the banana tree.

The three plants from some of the seeds that were sent to me have produced fruit and now I have seeds for next season. The long Thai bean looks so amazing when it grows vertically, it adds so much character to the garden. The seeds I now have are long Thai bean seeds, bottle gourd (I have not broken them out of the shell) and pumpkin which is still in the field and we haven't harvested.

In the field, the cow peas has spread nicely. It actually is so similar to the long Thai bean.

I had a call with mai Kumbi today and it went well. The issue was mainly on productivity, our field is now for the nyemba beans, so unlike most maize fields we still need to weed our beans and the grass was so high and the field needs weeding, this is something I needed to communicate. Also with the vegetables, in as much as I have left it all in their hands, we need to do things with targets and it seemed as if the replanting of vegetables was being done but slowly and I had to point this out. It felt uncomfortable delegating but she took it in so well. Her request was that we need a lot of onion seedlings when the time comes for us to plant onions and I have to make sure the seeds I planted grow well, otherwise we won't  be able to cover the area which we agreed to grow onions on, if we are to rely on buying seedlings from elsewhere.

A puzzle has been solved. I have always wondered why dried nyemba bean leaves or rather most traditional/ local vegetables aren't common in our households. It's the labor it takes to pick them up and process them. It has been difficult for me to sell the dried nyemba leaves and I only found out it's because of the soil still in the dried leaves. I never used to understand this, because I would cook the vegetables the wrong way. One old lady I visited and asked more on how to cook the leaves explained perfectly.

The leaves that are picked are the tender new leaves which you see because they are shiny and the green color is not as deep as the old ones. After picking, the leaves are thoroughly washed to remove any soil and this is something I learnt a few years back. (My mistake: I was not too bothered about a little bit of soil remaining, because I would then thoroughly wash the dried leaves just before cooking a meal). The wet leaves, still fresh from the field are then left to drip and dry a little in the sun, before they are boiled until they turn brown and then they are dried. When cooking the dried leaves, they should not be rewashed, because it takes some rich flavor away. So apparently it is so difficult to find these dried leaves without soil in them and this is why people don't buy them.
But because I believe we are at a point where we need food accessibility, crop variety and plants resilient to changing times that can protect our soil, we need to revisit some of the old and traditional ways of cooking even if it might be labor intensive. Now that I have learnt this, I will work on our dried leaves and have people trust me, the community I am in has mostly the elder people who grew up eating these leaves and they have a higher chance of buying. Once they do, they will expose their grandchildren to the leaves and this in turn will reintroduce the leaves into our lives. People in the rural areas still eat these leaves.

We have started harvesting our maize and most of the cobs are big in size. We have also harvested $15 worth of nyemba leaves from the same field. It has not been raining for some weeks now and though we have harvested maize, I hope the rain comes back for the nyemba plants. They have just started growing pods and we would like to still harvest as many leaves as possible.
I am impressed at the effort that is being put on the vegetable beds. Reducing the number of beds was a very good thing for us, because we were spreading our resources thinly for sure. Now that the space to be worked on is smaller, the mulch that's been put in the beds is a lot and there are weeds that are soaked in water for weed tea. All of this is being done in my absence and, it makes it a lot more exciting. Now that we are all on the same page on the importance of taking care of our soil, the next part is to work on productivity. Though the beds are mulched well and have healthy plants, there are gaps within the beds on spaces where there should be plants. I am going to be more strict on having a plant on every position that should have one and this will improve on effectiveness. The water and feed we put in our beds should be equal to the maximum produce we can get from each bed and we have to intentional about it. I know Kumbi and his mum want to expand, but we will only do this when we have successfully filled up the area we are currently working on with a plant on every   planned position.

The keyhole irrigation bed which I planted onion seeds has its own headaches. Most of the onion germinated well, but some of the seedlings would just wilt and die and I  dont know why yet, but I have deepened my planting depth in case the root area is too exposed. I would also wake up to find some cut by something. I don't know if it's rats because I don't know why but I thought rats do not eat onions. I did a second batch and covered with mesh wire and this worked well. I went away for about a week and when I got back, our dogs had started using the keyhole as a bed. Now I'm doing my third trial and I will keep at it until the beginning of May. If by this time I won't be having onion seedlings of my own, then I will have to go and buy some. That's one other up side to having my own seeds, there is room to experiment and grow.  The keyhole garden came with one pleasant surprise, it grows tomatoes effortlessly, something I did not think was even possible. There is a tomato plant that grew on its own, and I transplanted it in the keyhole bed. It is so healthy and I have not sprayed it with any chemical whatsoever.

Nice. Looks like a good corn harvest this year.

Stories around the globe are evident of a lot of instability, almost everywhere. In my country, ours is mainly political and economic instability. Socially there has been some resilience, because of the culture which had an Ubuntu backbone. This culture is wearing away fast and recently we have been experiencing things that people are doing to each other that we never thought were possible.
Yesterday most businesses were shutdown because of politically related statements that have been said. I won't go deep into this,
1) because I am afraid of being misunderstood
2) because my knowledge of politics is not strong.
Preparing for yesterday involved stocking up on groceries because we didn't know what was going to happen and how long it would affect us. Luckily businesses seem to be normalizing now. In most households people are living from hand to mouth and not too many can afford to stock up on groceries, meaning things would have been difficult for a lot of people, including us, if yesterday's outcome resulted in some sort of lock down. I am happy to say that for our two families, Mai Kumbi's and ours, we were better prepared, not because we had seen this coming, but because of some life choices we have been making. The main commodity that was being bought is mealie meal, for making sadza, the staple meal. Between Mai Kumbi and myself, none of us worried about food too much, at least for a few weeks. We have maize and vegetables (nyemba bean leaves). There is no variety yet, but just having these things easily accessible has helped us be calm in our situation. We didn't have to be intentionally unjust to anyone, for us to assure ourselves of some stability at a family level and this is such a huge achievement for me, considering this is entirely based on the produce from the land we are custodians of, not from an outside support, be it, an official job, project or support from family members. Below I have included images of the seeds we are getting from the field which is our hope for variety in the future, we will also get some maize grains for seed when we are done harvesting.

Yesterday I saw that the patch of onions that were left was now being cut/eaten also, it's a really small patch but I am using it to learn how I can care for the ones that are now germinating. I put some wire mesh on top of the onions and today they were intact. The weeds around though had been eaten. So I will be using a wire mesh to protect the new seedlings.
The other thing also is that the level of the soil in the bed lowered a lot, as the organic matter underneath is rotting. I am suspecting that the onions are lacking enough sunlight because they look long and very thin. There is so much food in the soil and I have been watering religiously so these factors are out. I have started removing a section of the wall supporting the bed to let the sun shine above the onions for longer hours, I will see how this goes.
I had breakfast sitting quietly by the garden and I finally saw the rat that's visiting my garden. So I am now sure the plants are being eaten by a rat and I will figure out my way around this problem.

Rats are such a pain. They are eating over half of the nuts that fall from my trees right now. I've got four rat traps baited with nice fresh peanut butter under the walnut trees and haven't caught one yet. Wire to protect your seedlings is a smart way to go.

I have 4 rat traps and I caught one. They seem to learn very fast because no matter what I put on the trap, they are not bitting anymore. The one that did eat the bait was smart enough to not set off the trap.