Rufaro Makamure

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.

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 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.

Monday was a day I meant to clear the other activities that are contributing to my overall vision but are not necessarily connected to this week's goal. These included a visit to the plot and devotion with my friend, which we couldn't do on Sunday. The day passed in a blink of an eye.

My sister and I woke up to go to the plot, we were not going to walk to the plot because during the rainy season the run-off water is greatly contaminated, and where we can minimise our exposure to this, we will do so. The neighborhood which we have to pass through is one of the worst in terms of contaminants. The wait was worth it. I found so many things at the plot being done right. The first thing was the warm welcome we got from mai Kumbi who was beaming with excitement and couldn't wait to show us the products of her family's work. They planted beans at the raised bed area like we discussed, and it's true when they say "to plant a garden is to believe in tomorrow", there is some great sense of hope I could see in my sister and mai Kumbi's faces, especially when we got to the bean beds  area. They just stood there quiet for a moment, and this place was communicating to us. It was filled with so much promise, that the cost  living is not as high as it's been made to be. It's not long since we harvested onions, now the space is already so alive telling us our effort is no longer going to be in vain.

We went to the onion storage area, and the air is too humid. I am afraid of watching our onions rot if we wait and keep the onions until the market has a good enough price. We decided to sell them this weekend, and I have to re-adjust my plans to include the selling of the onions. The maize and nyemba beans have germinated, and this time, we eliminated labor towards maize germination and the number of people involved in the planting. It's just Mai Kumbi and her husband who planted the field.  
The beetroots are not doing well at all, so I have decided to put beans on the beds that we had reserved to put beetroots in. We are still using weeds we harvested from the last rainy season, so in terms of our weed tea, we have enough material within our yard to continuously supply us for the whole year. What I need to start working on is to make a bin that allows access to weed tea without touching the soaked weeds.

There are only 5 chickens left of the 15 we bought.

There is a possibility that a lot of family will be coming to our house during the Christmas holiday and I need to work on the house. I visited a number of houses when we were making onion deliveries and things have changed so much. The interior of people's homes and the furniture they now have is so much better. I was so engrossed in this regeneration project that I wasn't seeing most of the improvements in how people are taking care of themselves. I have to work a miracle, not for any other reason, but to just have a feel of value when people come to our place.

The proposal I pitched to my sister yesterday worked,  and we are now talking  back and forth, working on her place. The remaining potato plants have no stems that have been cut, so the snail was the true stem cutting culprit.

My sister sent me images today, of some soil she moved to her garden. The city council cleared drains in her neighborhood, and just left the soil they took out from the drains by the roadside and so she took it. Eventually the soil would have been washed back into the drains. She will try to grow spinach, herbs, long Thai beans and okra. She is still weighing the benefits of growing food herself. She says its more convenient for her to buy food from the store and it's more logical, with her limited time. For instance she calculated the time she spent on her green peas and sugar beans, vs the actual harvest and the effort she put was not worth it. Because she knows the quality of homegrown food is better than store bought, she is willing to try something different which will make sense, effort wise to her. So we ended up talking about things that will not take long to grow and also plants that she can harvest from, continuously, which is how we came up with the listed choice of plants.

It's a Sunday today, and although I have dropped the tradition of going to church, I  get the idea of slowing down to focus on the spiritual part of life. But the idea of a Sunday persona reflects hypocrisy, and I respect someone who lives the values that they believe in, more than a person who is right by the books of doctrine and traditions. I can not answer the question of why I stopped going to church, and it's not the above-mentioned. What I know is that from a social point of view, it would take effort for me to fit in. I would also drift so much in church, and I would miss most of the word or preaching. An uncle of mine strongly believes in fellowshipping with others, and he does have valid points. One of them being that we can not live as Islands  physically or spiritually. Driven by a discussion I had with him, I now have a Bible study session with a friend, which is more intimate, and it is something I look forward to, weekly.

Today, I do not feel proud of myself from a religious point of view as well as from a regenerative system point of view. My sister went to church and on her way back she met with an acquaintance who was selling some clothes. Instead of being honest that she was not going to buy anything, she slid  my name into their conversation and she knows that buying clothes is the least of our priorities I was not amused by this, and I snapped at her and brought up a weakness I felt she needs to work on. I did not communicate with respect, and my tone was unacceptable she just absorbed everything, and she never commented. We are actually getting along pretty fine. It's her non-verbal communication that showed me I had hurt her. I have been trying to figure out how to apologise to her for most of today, but it's hard. She has gone to sleep now, so I will bring this up tomorrow. The home environment is part of my targeted work areas. In our case, I want us to focus on how we communicate with each other where we will do so, with so much transparency, but keeping respect and love. Outside individual growth, a home is the next level, which can make or  break people, and everything I am working on would be meaningless if I don't focus on creating a love field environment.

Towards my main goals, I had a meeting with the peanut butter business owner, but I will talk more about this a little later.

I have managed to meet my deadline. I sent my sister the proposed set up, to have her produce fodder for her goats to supplement stock feed that she will buy. There was a good reason why it was not easy to start working on this project, because it is a whole new area which needs its own kind of respect.

My sister has 6 hectares of land and I have the privilege to be a part of managing this place. She is already against cutting of trees and she has maintained as much of the trees that she found there as she can. She even attempted to grow some more  indigenous trees of her own. A month or two ago she was greatly disappointed when one of the guys who usually work with her burnt the place up. She had asked for him to make a fire guard because the areas around her plot were being burnt and she didn't want the fire to get into her yard. The boy thought she had said he should burn the inside of the yard and he torched the place up. There were people who were building a house for my sister who had gone away for the weekend, when they returned, they are the ones who called her to tell her that her place had been burnt, even they were surprised how the boy thought to burn the place like he did, yet everyone knows how my sister feels about burning fields and cutting trees.  The trees she had planted were all burnt in this fire.

This part of my sister  makes it easy for me because it aligns with my values. My worry is with the gradual growth of a permaculture approach. She has just come out of trying pen fattening and one of the reasons why she chose it is its speed in giving returns. When I did my research, I liked the silvo pastures, where trees, shrubs and grasses are mixed to produce stock feed as well as fuel (firewood) and even food for people. It also promises stability in the long run. To sell my idea, to start with, I have proposed some plants that I have witnessed to be easy to grow, for example banana plants, mulberry trees and pigeon pea. The space I have been asked to start with is on a low lying area and most of the rain water settles here, as a result it is usually wet (waterlocked I think) during the rainy season. As a result I have picked first the plants that are more tolerant of this and yet they also tolerate drought conditionds. To add to the mix I have included gliricidia and ficus, which are plants I have never seen, but could work as fodder for the goats. Another thing I have considered is the possibility of turning this space into an ornamental garden. All the trees I chose can be either pruned, pleached or made into topiary trees. I figured if these trees are going to have their branches cut, to feed goats, this might be done in a way that makes the space to look "textbook" pretty and this can make the proposal more attractive. Other trees and grasses are for later introduction, and these can be used as hedges and boundaries fir a paddock system as well. As we move away from the buildings the design can become more and more natural with less human interaction apart from adding specific trees and  harvesting of fodder for the goats.

I also proposed a water harvesting pit which will be surrounded by the banana plants.
I am yet to hear what she says, hopefully she will like what I have proposed enough to have me work with her as she moulds the design to suit what she wants. I tried to keep the suggestions very little and if these work, we can grow from there.

One of the motives why I was excited to do this project was the possibility to get paid. This changed when I had time to think about this. My sister has supported me as I grow my space, this is part of the fruits, for allowing me to explore permaculture, knowing that someone has my back has given me time. She is also possibly going to expand my area of influence, which is a satisfying thing on its own. So if she allows me to work with her, she will be funding my dream of growing a regenerative system and in all fairness it will be improper for her to pay me. We already support each other in non-commerce ways and I would like to keep it that way.

I know I am not supposed to write anything before writing about a design proposal for my sister, which I am hoping to finish today.

I just can't keep my feelings bottled. I am beyond frustrated at the moment. Some potato stems, in the keyhole garden have been cut, leaving a whole potato plant destroyed (well I kind of destroyed it digging to find a cutworm). I found a snail instead and I was angry at it, I am a friend, yet it eats my potatoes. I know its not its fault, but I am still angry. I moved it to the banana plant and I hope no additional potatoes will be damaged.

The next thing on my list is working on helping my sister design her space for her goats. I was so excited when she asked for my help, but concentrating on gathering information about goats rearing has not been as easy as I had hoped. The first few days, I would open a page online and sit for some time reading, and I wouldn't understand anything at all. I could make out the single words and their meanings, but I couldn't make sense of what I was reading, and the more I tried, the harder it would get. I was now sleeping whenever I  would start reading, such that I had to stop.
When I did goal setting, I put my goals in a list, in order of highest priority first. The strategy is to work on one goal at a time and I cannot go to the next one until I finish.  I have to write down my progress for not just me to see, but here on my thread. This is actually a lot of pressure because every time I do not have anything to write, it implies I have not done any work, and even if I do something that clears another goal, I can not write about it if I have not fibished writing on a goal that comes before it on my list. So my daily routine is as follows:
I wake up to either sweep our yard or prepare food for the dogs and make some tea that we take as we do our morning devotion, which should be at 6 am every day except for Sunday.  We came up with a duty roster with my sister for cooking and cleaning the house. Before this, we used to just do things, and we realised that it did not work. We never used to sweep the yard, and my excuse, for not doing something that is practiced by almost everyone around here, was because it erodes the soil and for paved parts, its outside, dust is going to gather anyways so why bother. When we stayed with my niece, sweeping the outside was a must do for her, and the space looked nicer when she swept it, so we adopted this when she left and we added it to our daily chores. On my cooking day, I do not leave dishes in the sink after eating, and I am still practicing cleaning as I go, especially in the kitchen. This takes up most of the mornings, and there is a bigger part of the afternoon that is also used up when I cook lunch. I thank God for the  2 meal diet we are following. It has reduced some cooking time, giving me more time for other things. Unlike the past years, it is a must for me to clean the space I am in, for myself, and to prepare proper food. I used to rush to do tasks I thought were of greater purpose, and I would put up cleaning and cooking for later. As a result of this, productive work in relation to my goals now starts a little later in the day.

I can only start reading literature on goats after my chores, and because I cannot go to the next goal before tackling this one, I have to sit and read, whether I am getting what I am reading or not. Today was a much better day. This change came about when I was in the ladies. The seat was more comfortable compared to our sofas and most chairs we have in the house, and the air is so much cooler and moist because we fill up our tub with water that we store for flushing, since we only have a day and some hours in a week that our city council gives us running water. I decided to grab my reading material, and when I started reading, things were clearer. I now have a new reading spot, which my sister finds extremely weird, I think it's not proper too, but it will do for now, and I know for sure that when the time comes to fix our house, temperature regulation, color of walls and an extremely comfortable seating space will be of high priority.

I hope I will be writing about my work on my sister's space soon.

It was so easy for me to know what to prioritize when I began to organize the projects that are floating everywhere in my head. I have been learning and am still learning to shift my mindset from a selfless way of living to a self-awareness one, which makes me the center of my world, without feeling guilty, and at the same time continuing to respect other worlds' centers. I planned to go to the hospital, a place I put in the same bracket as nightmares, because hospitals terrify me. I was worried about my breathing, and this was days after I had choked badly on nyemba beans (cowpeas). When I was in the waiting room this time around, there were very few people about 5, but I still waited for 3 hours before I could see the doctor. I was glad I had carried a novel with me. I also had time to think of the circumstances surrounding my choking incident.
We were preparing for our holiday and this time around all my siblings would be present, so this was a really important holiday. One of my sisters I stay with had gone to have her hair done, and the other one had arrived into town but had decided to wait for the one who was having her hair done. I, on the other hand, had a more important business to deal with. I saw an opportunity to reinforce the value of nyemba beans as a valuable bean, equal in its value to sugar beans as food to have in the kitchen. Holidays are coupled with good "classy" food, and I wanted to throw nyemba beans in the mix for it to mark its own presence without me saying anything. It was late in the evening, when I decided to taste the nyemba bean, which was still on the stove, to see whether it was cooked enough for me to use it  in my rice. It was cooked alright, so I left it with its water. That is what was going to cook the rice and give it an even richer flavor. I must have chewed and swallowed too fast such that I choked badly. I coughed for a while and lay on the bed, coughing by myself. and it was after some hours when my sisters came, and I must have slept because they woke me up. I was still coughing when I woke up, but it was not as bad, and it was now after midnight, so I resumed my cooking because this trip was too important for me to cancel. I still would cough a little during our journey, but it was not much. My throat was painful when I would eat. In some way, it worked in my favor because nyemba bean became a topic throughout the trip. We had the nyemba/rice mix for lunch and for supper. My family was not too enthusiastic about the idea of the meal before they tasted it, but it was a winner when they ate it. My sister-in-law requested a very small portion during lunch because she said she gets an upset stomach if she eats nyemba. A lot of people claim that indigenous food stuff make them sick, and for some it could be true but in some cases I think it has a lot to do with the class nyemba bean is associated with in our community. The rice was a part of the starch for lunch and supper. During supper, my sister-in-law did not ask for a smaller portion. She had her full share, and when we were leaving, she commented on how tasty the rice was. It definitely forms one of my nice memories.
I went back to reading my book, and eventually, I was called in to see the doctor. I was told to get some blood tests and have an X-ray. He also did a physical examination. All the tests costed me, and the most expensive one,  was the blood test, which he never looked at when they came, he only looked at the X-ray and told me not to worry because no food went the wrong way. I was puzzled why he had requested blood tests, the body physical exam maybe he had to do, but I wish he didn't have to.