Finding myself with a little bit of time on my hands, I suppose I should get busy and put some updates here before the last 2 months or so dwindle to but a hazy memory.
In fact it seems like kind of a hazy memory now. Its difficult to think of what we've been doing since we got back from Botswana. That last update was a good couple of weeks following us getting back... i'll try to put it together.
Ali has been back in europe for 3 weeks now; it has certainly been a bit more dull around here without someone else to laugh about the frustrations with & generally take the piss out of life. My cooking efforts have certainly been slipping as well. There isn't much enjoyment struggling to cook a meal for one on 2 tiny hotplates on an electric cook top; and then having to wash up as well. My food has also been going off - they don't really sell single portions of anything here as everyone has a family; and I just can't eat 2 person's worth of food, especially when i'm losing the will to cook!
I'm off to Oz in 2 weeks to meet up with her & I am very much looking forward to the break. I feel like I'm running out of energy here; actually the energy here feels a bit flat.
Maybe it is the weather - the cool period has definitely come to an end and it is getting pretty warm during the day. The leaves are falling from the trees to save water, and everything feels dry and dusty. Not really the weather for running around and getting active.
Kufunda has also been very quiet over the last 10 days through hosting the meditation course. I was hoping to take part, but then it was an on-again, off-again thing & I just made other plans. Most of the village was out-of-bounds for non-participants (the participants weren't doing any talking anyway) so I was treading a fairly boring route of home to the office and back again a few times a day.
As the regular driver (Simba) was meditating I was asked if I could do the driving; this was ok, but after agreeing to 2 days of driving it actually turned into 5. A day into town & back sort of takes the whole day, so it was a farily unproductive week.
On friday I headed to the Zimbabwe Agricultural Show with a few of the guys from the village. It was a little bit like the Perth Royal Ag Show - animals, farm machinery, info stalls, etc. I didn't think it really provided much (or anything) for most farmers over here - what with $250,000 tractors, mercedes-benz marquees, pricey fertilizer & seeds - it was all a bit out of reach.
I found some people to talk to about tree fodders & agroforestry and where I could potentially get seed, I followed up & still waiting for them to get back to me.
There was also a bunch of guys doing vermiculture & compost teas from vermi-compost, and another guy with a really simple biogas digester. Definitely something to follow up if we come back next year.
Following the show I ended up at Alice & Webber's as Alice's son was having a birthday party. That was good fun & ended up with a late night session for the bigger kids, including a boozy return to the terrible judgement bar at around midnight. The rest of the weekend was spent fairly horizontally watching movies, eating racks of ribs and talking shit. Those guys are gold, a little bit of my crew in Zimbabwe.
So to put together the other end of the last couple of months...
Return from Bots (was mid July I think) & a few days recovery. Then we started picking up again on the microfinance project, and it was all pretty full on with that, designing a training programme and trying to get the teams in place. We ran 2 training sessions at Kufunda, and I ran another one in Epworth. Produced something like 14 documents and talked until my tongue was like sandpaper. I think people understood it all though.
We caught up with David & Wendy and met their neighbours who also came out to Zim as volunteers and have decided to stay for a while. Cooked a lovely dinner to say thank you to D&W, much better than going out for dinner over here!
The next day we saw John who took us home from Nyanger & caught up on his stories about trying to get his property back. Pretty crazy stuff - he's been threatened & intimidated, followed, phone bugged, etc and all he is trying to do is get his property back that the govt have actually ruled should never have been taken from him.
Ali put me on a diet as after our holiday, plus a week catching up with people in Harare & doing plenty of drinking & eating I'd started to get a bit of a tummy.
I ran & did lots of pushups & sit-ups for about 2 weeks.
Then Ali left & I went on a couple of nights out with Tindo & some guys from Kufunda to Ziko in Seke. Its an hour's walk through the bush to get to the nearest bar. You have to cross a river. Apparently you can't cross in the wet season as the river is too high but there is a guy that will ferry you across in an old tractor tire tube. Madness. He doesn't do it after dark, so the Ziko boozing sort of stops. A bit of a shame as they do a brilliant bbq there. You buy your meat in the butcher, then there's a huge braai just out the front. The guys braai your meat for a dollar, so it $6 for a kg of pork and 2 plates of sadza; not a bad accompaniment to a few beers in the sun.
The first time we went I ended up dancing with the chick from behind the meat counter, and who subsequently suggested that she cooks for me one night. Tempting.
We'd been drinking Chibuku, the local fermented maize drink. It is opaque, has lumps in it & is the closest thing you can probably get to a beer milkshake. You get 6L for $2, so the guys I was with drink that because its cheap. After a few fast mugs it is sort of bearable. I think I drank most of it cos I was pushing to get it over with & get on the lagers. Because it is still fermenting when you drink it, it gives you crazy dreams and makes you feel pretty rough the next day.
We staggered back through the bush & over the rocks in the river. I'd brought my torch, I have no idea how those guys do it in the pitch dark when they're so drunk. Tourai was doing very well setting a good pace, whilst tindo & I were both stumbling into bushes and probably walking twice the distance from our zig-zagging.
I felt shocking after that first weekend - properly took me 3 days to29/08/09 get over it; I'm blaming the Chibuku, but we must have been really smashed. Apparently we got home at 1am & we'd been there since half 2.
That was a bit of a bad move as I had lots of work to do that week, but a combo of that & me having to drive a fair bit again meant that I was behind with work. I put that night at Ziko at August 16th.
Pretty much all the work I have been doing has either been the Micro Finance stuff, the Permaculture design for Knuth Farm or driving. Oh & the piggery investment...
Tindo approached us shortly before Ali left with a business proposal. We put up the cash & he does the work for a small piggery project with 9 sows. The returns are actually really good as the price for pork is decent. He's a young guy but he works really hard and he knows what he is doing when it comes to pigs. He's probably the only person that we really trust here, so we're going to give it a go. If we are back in Zim next year it'll mean that we'll have some extra income, and it'll be fun to play farmer for a while. We're all looking at it as a medium-term investment as we can see a few side businesses that can come out of it - e.g. compost, wormfarming, butchery. I have a few ideas on things like direct sales where we can get a better price than existing butcheries will give; its just a matter of doing the right marketing to some people that own deep freezes!
All going well it'll be running by November and by that time next year we'll be running more sows. Crazy, but this is the sort of opportunities that are here. At least if it goes pear shaped the losses aren't that great, yet the investment that we can make is far more than he can save in a few years, so it will make a huge difference to him.
The PC design for Knuth Farm has involved a lot of research, but I think I've come up with something pretty good. Its certainly a lot better than what is currently in place, and should be able to yield some decent results as the system matures over 3 - 10 years.
I'll put up a separate post about that & try to get a photo of the design that i've done.
I think that is about it. Mainly its been about work, a bit of boozing on the weekends and getting out for the odd run.
Which is what i'm going to do now!
