Rufaro Makamure

The visual worked!!!
Mai Kumbi was drawn more to the spinach and how big the leaves are. I was honest with her about how I felt and things were a little difficult to handle at first and mai Kumbi was panicking. I told her we should be comfortable to criticize each other for the sake of progress. I am not used to this too, and I had to fight the urge to want to be nice by sugar coating how I truly felt. I was kind though, well I think. In the end we agreed that she will work on her space and we will work on ours and see how things go. We are past pushing each other, I am working on my personal shift of mindset, in the way I am involved in the growing of things at the plot, so we are both battling our issues, no one is going to have time to follow the other up.

Again our revenue increased. I was afraid that she is putting some of the money she is making from her flowers so as to impress me, because the area she left with plants growing is so small. She swore she was not taking money from anywhere. I really hope she is telling the truth, because if she isn't whatever I am celebrating will be false growth.

I am preparing for my meeting with mai Kumbi. I will be showing her the plants in the keyhole garden and how healthy looking they are, without any commercial fertilizers or sprays. I also hope to show her how we can utilise our space to the maximum, by never leaving the land we have idle, after harvesting. The rats couldn't get into the spinach patch, so I have the healthy spinach leaves to show case as well as beetroots. Within the beetroots, I put peas today, that I have nursed in tissue roll cores. When I am harvesting the beets, something will remain growing in their place, that way there won't be a time when the space has nothing growing on it.

I have also grown sweet potatoes in sacks and I  am trying out ginger which I put in an old TV case. Within the sweet potato bags, I put dill, and parsley and then I grew lettuce in the ginger pot. A tomato plant grew on it's own and I am letting grow.

I am thinking about a new approach with mai Kumbi. About *two weeks back* I went to the plot after many months. I had stopped going to the plot, to find out how things can be if I am not on the ground. I went and saw that most of the beds that we used to grow things in had been abandoned, something that was not communicated. I was stuck, because I have done all I can in selling the idea of the plot being a source of survival to mai Kumbi and her family, hoping they will end up putting more effort on the plot.

After my friend offered to help, my last plan is to grow things myself with my sister. Hopefully, this will prove the place can actually give an easier source of income and buy this family in. We need as many hands on deck as we can possibly have.

The reason is because of what I am seeing on my way to the plot. People are building everywhere and our lifestyle takes more from the land than it gives back. For example, there are heaps of gravel that are along the road close to the plot which are for fixing the road. On the side, parallel to the gravel, there are heaps of soil that was scooped from the sides of the road, soil that would have been carried from somewhere by the rain and deposited on the road side, building up as the years pass. The quantities of soil I am seeing is a lot, the gravel heaps stretch beyond what the eyes can see. We do need good roads, but the price we are paying is too high. Other roads that had gravel laid on it are already starting to have potholes, meaning gravel is now a consumable. It will be needed again and again if the roads are to be maintained in good shape. Then there is the building of houses that is everywhere.

There is a need more than ever to create a working system that is regenerative, which can attract others. If we have many people feeding into this, then we can start countering the current effects of the lifestyle we already have.

I am meeting with mai Kumbi, to explain this. Already she was not happy that we reopened the beds she gad abandoned, without running it by her. But she never communicated her plans, so I did not feel the need to explain myself too much to her, before our monthly meeting date. I think she knew that I had no confidence in growing things myself, so I relied on her entirely, but now I see things differently and I have my sister, things will be different.

When she saw us clearing the space, she started clearing the onion area, to plant beans. This is something we had talked about a month ago, and she had not done it. I hope this new approach will push both our families to work hard on this piece of land.

I am meeting with mai Kumbi today.

John C Daley wrote:Wha is that being built?
Is that steel fence what you have around your garden?

There is a wall that's being built around my neighbor's  house. We are six yards only that are an acre big, all the others that are being built so far, are 300 square meters or less. Of the six, 5 of them have multiple buildings that are being built, some for renting out and one seems to be building a shopping area in his yard.

There is still a fence on our side that's between us and our neighbor where the chickens are coming through.

It is raining heavily and the droplets were significant the moment we entered our home from the plot. Of a total number of 16 beds, we managed to plant a total of 12. I am so thankful for the drive my sister has, if it wasn't for her I would not have covered the area we did. We ended up working together on the beds, though we each are responsible for our own individual beds.
My sister pushes...it's a good thing. We are both exhausted but very happy.

My friend came through for me and I managed to have beds that had been abandoned, remade. We are now planting and my sister believes in burying her organic matter so she is digging pits before she plants.

We are busy, she has finished burying and planting in one bed and she finished at the same time as me, I did not dig, I was just planting in the beds. I will work on feeding the beds as the plants grow. I used to be bothered by how slow I am, which made it difficult for me to be confident in myself in growing things at the plot. Today, I am not even phased, I am doing the best I can and I will push myself to the best of my abilities.

A neighbor's chickens are eating our vegetables, they were told but they are not doing anything about it. The man who owns the chickens would come and connect his hose pipe without asking for permission, fetching water to build his massive durahall. He is bullying us and there is not much we can do. We are locking the gate though, so he no longer takes our water for his building project.

A force in the positive direction might have been unleashed in my sister, progress wise. We are engaging people other than mai Kumbi and her family, to help us make beds at the plot. I do not have money for this, but  a friend promised to help me if I give him a budget. It was exciting to know that help is this close and that's how come I made plans and engaged my sister in the first place. As the days are moving I  kept on thinking about this and I am becoming afraid of borrowing money from my friend. Unlike Apo's business, where he already has some cash flow, I will be starting from scratch and my promise of returning money to my friend is based on my prediction of how things will be. I am sure that if we put in enough work and inputs towards growing things, we will get a good harvest but I am afraid of disappointing my friend, if there are any unforseen factors.

All along I thought my sister would be depending on me, on the two beds she wants to start working on. So as we were looking for people to help us, I started withdrawing a little from the process and she poked me until I told her the reason. She just told me that the reason why my progress is slow is that I over think, which makes it difficult for me to get help. Having said this, she said she is independently doing her beds, using her savings. I was pleasantly surprised that she was willing to use her money for this,  that's more people and more resources towards building a sustainable homestead. I am also accepting that I will need help as I grow with things that I have already set up, but also with things that are still on paper. So I am working on a budget for my friend to see and hopefully he will be able to help.

John, I looked more at water harvesting from dew collection and it's far from what I was imagining could be possible. I had an image of wet grass in the morning, which usually happens when we are in the rainy season and there is moisture in the air. I could hear you, but I didn't  exactly understand I think, the words were making sense but not the idea (I don't even know if this makes sense). After a little search and seeing images I have a clear picture of what you were saying. I think this is an interesting concept indeed. I hope I will be able to share if I fetch some water this way.  

Today I woke up and it was raining, I managed to fetch some water. It is odd though that it's raining this much now. It is also cold like we are in winter.

The heat in the past days was very high. To protect the pumkin leaves which were wilting even when I would have watered the plant, I threw some banana leaves on top of the fence protecting the pumpkin plant and the shade was goodbenough to keep it from wilting. We started eating leaves from the pumpkin plant today. My initial plan was not to eat the leaves and to allow the plant to grow without being disturbed. Its the first plant in the yard that has not had mould on the leaves. I changed my mind when I saw a tiny hole on the first female flower. Some pest got to it and now its turning yellow and its not growing.

Thanks John.

It's dry, there is no dew. About my sister I learnt about depression the hard way. It's not something that is considered a problem in too many households, so for my sister to even know she had depression was a good thing for her. I only realised it after she told me a number of times when I would expect more from her. It didn't make sense initially until I started being conscious of traits that depressed people have when I would watch movies and watch my sister and I became more understanding.

So over the weekend, a friend offered to help me at the plot with the next step I am getting into, of engaging a paid person to work in parallel with mai Kumbi's family ( more when I talk about the plot so that I don't mix up things). I automatically went to my sister and started making plans including her in them, it took me a night to realise that I just assumed she will want to do what I am doing and that she had nothing of her own planned. I then had a talk with her the next day, highlighting this and removing "we" from my projects to let her know that we are individuals and she needs to have her own time to figure out who she is and what she wants to do. She was the one who chose to join me, but she will be taking care of her own beds, her own way.