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permaculture advocate in Zimbabwe - too little/too much rain

 
pollinator
Posts: 712
Location: Zimbabwe
593
greening the desert
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The holiday was such a success. We sat down the three of us as sisters, discussing on how we could have some purpose as a team, as we develop ourselves individually. Carrying our parents' touch of developing family was the most sensible idea. They focused on education and we will adopt this and also add self awareness development. We joined our different capacities to work on education, health and recreation. We had targeted to get to our brother through helping his stepson but he didn't manage to send his son, I am sure we will be lucky some other way. Our goal with education was to plant self belief especially to the ones writing their finals this year. It was a little demanding, at some point we had to wake up in the middle of the night and one of the girls couldn't take this well and yet she is the one who was struggling the most. Later I realized she had unconsciously given up hope. We talked in general with all the girls that they can get all the world's resources, to make them successful, but without input from them it will be in vain. That night the one who found waking up at night hard, woke up at 3am and did all her assignment and she got most of it correct. It's like there was a switch that was turned on, in her.

Health wise veggies were a challenge with them all. One of the older ones who has a lot of influence realized that most things we were talking about were things she was learning in her biology, as we studied she stopped making noise about her veggies but she did not start encouraging others which was a little disappointing. When she went back home, she sent us a menu plan she did for her siblings before she went back to school and together with my sister they bought some of the things to help her mother with, to smoothly follow the plan. I was overjoyed.

Then lastly they spent the holiday being taught how to dance and before they went back they had a video shoot in town and they seemed to enjoy it. We didn't get to go to the local university but we managed to take them to the local military and aviation museum and they seemed to really like it. One was afraid initially but towards the end she was posing for the pictures all happy.

We didn't forget ourselves, we had a night out just as adults the three of us. We realized it's nice us only mkig a difference in the kids' lives their presence was magical for all of us.
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steward & manure connoisseur
Posts: 4310
Location: South of Capricorn
2331
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Rufaro, I've been thinking a lot about your posts lately with regard to the children. It is an amazingly generous act to bring these kids into your home and dedicate yourself to their education, even for a short time. It's very impressive.
I've been thinking of your situation with your niece against the backdrop of a friend of mine who used to teach high school but now has become a professional foster care provider for children removed from their families (she is in the UK). She has a lifetime of teaching but has never lived with children. It has been six months with smaller children and just recently she had her first big challenge, a 13-year-old who has run away several times, harmed herself, and basically is being a handful. As my friend did not have her own children we've been talking a lot about what it means to raise young people, especially women, and how to do it while respecting yourself as well as the kids. Like your niece, the young people my friend is caring for have challenging backgrounds that add a layer of complexity. But at this age, no matter what their personality or their background, their brains and hormones are a raging storm of change that is almost certain to reflect in their behavior (maddening as it may seem to us, when we are worried about their safety, for example). I personally, when teaching young people and raising my own daughter, always tried to acknowledge this situation while also making clear that both they and I deserved respect: in other words, I treated them like I would treat any friend or colleague of mine, like an adult, and make my emotions and justifications clear without speaking down to them. If I was disappointed, I explained why, in terms of how it affected me (rather than what "is expected" from them, for example). I tried to be clear, matter of fact, and then move forward without dwelling on what they did before.
It's very hard to be the adult, especially when you know that children are "programmed" to test limits. But it's how they learn. And it is so valuable for them to see an adult who can feel emotions but not be toppled by them, and who can also set limits and show self-respect. Working with young people at this stage is really challenging, but it is probably the most impact I've had in my life, and it's fabulous you are doing this for this young woman. I respect your efforts so much.
 
Rufaro Makamure
pollinator
Posts: 712
Location: Zimbabwe
593
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Thanks for the advice, I am glad I didn't say anything to the little one. There is a lot of growing up I need to do as well, as you say, for me to be the parent in all this.

I woke up to a beautiful pumpkin flower and it is so beautiful to look at and it's big. The plant with this flower has no male flower which is such a disappointment, I decided to take the only male flower that's around and it's on the first squash plant that was being eaten by rats. Now the plant is no longer being eaten, I think the rat that was eating the plant is one of those that died. The plant however has a disease and all the potential pumpkins become yellow and fall from the pumpkin before they are even fertilized.  I sprayed it with some bicarbonate of soda once, but the plant looks really bad. I hope this cross pollination works.
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Rufaro Makamure
pollinator
Posts: 712
Location: Zimbabwe
593
greening the desert
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I went to the plot today, my plan was to work around the area with the vetiver grass, removing all the weeds so that this space looks nice and clean. I checked the way the onions are being planted and also the bed of kale that I  had asked not to be pruned. I found that for most onion seedlings, they are maintaining a distance of 30cm apart  which I had asked them to reduce to 10cm and the kale bed has been harvested, so we cannot sample the benefits of not pruning the plant until almost all leaves are gone. I seem not to say things that are heard. I have been patient for a very long time and I wonder if we will ever understand each other at least to talk about things and agree on one thing. What I find difficult is to ask this family to go because where we are coming from is so far and I know if I am to get a new family we will be starting from scratch. Mai Kumbi and her family have embraced the value of organic matter and we are some  few steps towards doing things not entirely for money but with an Ubuntu spirit (we all are far from getting there though). With all this work it's difficult to just let them go but at the same time if we are not hearing each other then we are not going far. I know I am not firm maybe that's why progress is taking long and why I am taken advantage of. This time I was so clear about what I wanted and I was not interfering.

I had one women whose other family I trust, come and help out with weeding two weeks back. I wanted to assess how she works in case I might need to work with her, she also took her time weeding the area I gave her, because she had other things to focus on and it was not too helpful. The intention of showing the time it takes a person dedicated to her work did not come out. I am now clearing the place and no matter how slow I might be I hope it will show that we need to do more tasks per day if we are to be successful. I actually envy Kumbi and his mom's strength and speed.

On the upside the vetiver has grown very high it's exactly what I wanted it to look like along the edge. I need to clean the space up and we will probably start harvesting the grass this year.
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Rufaro Makamure
pollinator
Posts: 712
Location: Zimbabwe
593
greening the desert
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I called my niece scheduling our first attempt at virtual learning. We agreed to try and continue with classes on WatsApp and it was hard with them in person, to fully get their attention. I honestly did not have too much hope but I was willing to try. The little lady proved me wrong, her enthusiasm in starting surprised me and she is buying her own mathematical set from her travel change, including her own airtime for the first few sessions of class. I am really impressed beyond my imagination. She has even started showing off her skills with graphs at school and its on her first day. Her aunt also, from her father's side, will be making sure she has no chores left by the time she has to be in class
 
Rufaro Makamure
pollinator
Posts: 712
Location: Zimbabwe
593
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I have planted some spinach in the keyhole garden, after putting soil I felt was a good height. This is for the section I planted spinach on. I was able to empty the kitchen compost at the center of the keyhole bed to get the material at the bottom which will be ready food for the worms, and that is the last layer of organic matter I used. The material I had was not enough to cover the whole area I needed to work on, so I only filled in, the part that I could so that I could plant the spinach I got.

I also transfered  the rat trap, it's now in the garden, which narrows down the catch to rats that enter the bed. It's just a container with water and peanut butter right above the water level.
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Rufaro Makamure
pollinator
Posts: 712
Location: Zimbabwe
593
greening the desert
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When I woke up in the morning all the peanut butter in my trap had been licked clean. I saw a bit of some fur, and it looked like a rat was caught last night, but the dogs got to my trap first. I covered the bed with anything I could get a hold of, because they are trampling over my plants. In the afternoon, I caught one dog red handed with a rat from the trap, he somehow raked through the barriers I had put. So the trap is working perfectly, I just need to make a barrier strong enough to keep the dogs out of the garden.

My first online lesson was a bit difficult, our network was bad, but the girls did not give up. The progress is so much slower virtually but it is definitely better than nothing.
 
Rufaro Makamure
pollinator
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Today's lesson has failed, it's 21 minutes after 7pm  the time we should be starting our lesson. I only managed to greet the girls but after that I can only see one tick on my messages, and nothing from them. The network is really bad today. So I have suggested that they agree on how they want us to do our class. What I respect them for is that, I could see that they were both online, meaning on their part they have done all they can.
 
Rufaro Makamure
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593
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My niece's excitement towards school seems to have been deflated, which is a space she has been in, when she experiences a challenging topic. When She was here, she couldn't be in a shell because she would run out of excuses and I would be right there waiting for her to get comfortable. Now I have no control whatsoever. She complains mostly of network problems and the messages that do get through are when she is talking about being spiritually attacked because people do not want her to succeed in school. The moment she started talking about spiritual things is when I realized that she is loosing hope and she is afraid. The lucky thing is my other niece is not yet back and she is also learning virtually and she does have network challenges but she makes sure at some point in the day, she does her work and sends it. We no longer do our classes in real time, but the girls send their work and questions whenever their networks allows them and I also send audios of the day's lesson. I am lucky because I now know that network might be really bad but we can work around it, something I wouldn't have known if it had not been for my other niece. They have the same circumstances and if I had not known we can work around network issues, I probably would have stopped trying these virtual lessons. Then the second thing is the two of them share the same spiritual beliefs and I am working with niece number two, for her to be a peer motivator from a perspective that my other niece will understand. One thing to start with is for the two girls to at least put in some effort in attempting their maths, as opposed to being drowned by the thought of spiritual attacks and have time pass away, until there really is no time to make a difference.

CAMFED my niece's donors have played their part wonderfully, she has books, they gave her some supplies to make her life easier at home, we all now have to meet these guys half way. For us the child's support structure we need to help her gain her confidence, but our effort or the donor's effort is going to be in vain if we fail to get her in the right head space for her to help herself.
 
pollinator
Posts: 884
Location: Kansas
236
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"I can't" is a hard place to get out of. It could be coming from recent discouragement, which is the easiest to resolve. If it's coming from ongoing social reinforcement,  that will be hardest to resolve because it requires her to revognize the unconscious expectations, not only of herself but also of the people around her.

I know you went (and are still going) through this process of recognizing broken social constraints. Maybe use some of the techniques you used for yourself?
 
Rufaro Makamure
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I have been figuring out how to keep my niece interested in school and now she has even invited one of her friends, (I was not okay with this initially until my sister and friend helped me see it differently, I had not been consulted before her friend joined, which was not okay by me). I was understanding and patient for a while with my niece, considering her network issues. There was a point where she would take more than two days to get back to me on small assignments I would give her, until she stopped sending assignments. I realized then that I needed to let go. No matter how much I needed her to keep her scholarship, it was not up to me. I let her know that and gave her an option for us to drop this class altogether and she chose to continue. Her network is so much better now, we actually do most of our classes very close to real time.

While we were busy finding our feet in class. Issues and fights amongst some relatives were starting and the center of the issues was my niece and she has no idea things are happening in the background. The fighting got to a point where my niece was almost confronted which would have made all the work we are doing for her school useless. I did manage to buy time, with regards to family courts, hopefully by the time she will be confronted, she will be so comfortable in school such that personal issues will not draw her back and its not helping much that she is a teen, her decisions are not the best. Now I understand how getting out of poverty is complex. Simply paying my niece's school fees, giving her extra lessons or even having her choose school is not enough to help her. Different understandings of how she needs to be helped,  by different people in her life, almost made people clash in a way that would have costed her greatly and it was going to  be noone's fault really because various decisions and actions are intended to be good and they are based on life different perceptions, in this case clashing perceptions.
 
Rufaro Makamure
pollinator
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Location: Zimbabwe
593
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I had a chat with my other cousin who is staying with us. School for her is at home and we have been struggling to keep class times. There are two extreme  situations in our home routines, one takes away responsibility from anyone called a child, where nothing is expected of them and the other side, uses those relatives that come to seek some kind of help, as maids that do not get paid. We are finding a balance, where school takes the highest priority since it is the main reason she is with us, but at the same time she needs to help out with chores around the house. This is making me grow in terms of respecting time and organizing a day for more than just myself.

I have focused on trying to bring out some economic value from the land we own and this is a goal I will keep. I am now backing this up with selling peanut butter, so that we can grow our lifestyle as I am working on the plot. We have been adjusting the food we eat to meet the flow of money that we have been getting. This has limited our growth in lifestyle medicine, and I am taking a different approach, where we need to find means to grow our income to meet the growth demands of a lifestyle we want.  This is how we ended up selling peanut butter. At the plot I'm still trying to strengthen the relationship we have with the family staying at the plot, and to have it lean towards a productive union.
 
Rufaro Makamure
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593
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Today I have halted the online lessons, I have tried to make it work with the tricks I could think of and there is still a barrier, either it's genuinely network issues or it's the lack of realization from my niece that there is need for her to put in a lot of work also, to make this work. I hope I will help my niece.
 
Rufaro Makamure
pollinator
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593
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My niece got to almost begging for lessons to continue, which I found confusing because from how things were, I thought not doing lessons with her is something she would jump at. I gave her a test on things we did from the first topic and told her she needed to know how to answer the questions to show she was serious. My other niece the one who is staying with me, is helping her with these questions. Yesterday she was available and her network was working for most part of the evening, and she sent her attempt on the test to her sister who was helping her. I did not join in the lesson but I was secretly overjoyed.
 
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