An Intern’s Inside Glimpse of the Chivhu Community

The following is an email written by Madelaine Shelling, a current Foundations for Farming intern from New Zealand, sending news back to her family and friends. Thank you Madelaine for celebrating with us and sharing your inside view and story of this special community!

I went last Thursday with one of the Foundations for Farming Trainers called Duncan (who is Shona), and a guy called Ben (who is not Shona, but can speak it absolutely fluently!!). It was a 2 hour drive away from Harare, and when we arrived it looked like nothing but a few buildings in the wops. There were a few brick “houses” around – some half built, some looking more like shelters than homes. It was the first I’ve seen of the “real” rural Africa. You would be hard pressed to find a more marginalised community. They were very poor, and their disabilities not only ostracise them from the rest of the community (many would have been abandoned as children) but also decrease their employment opportunities. They were pretty stoked to show me their new toilet, which had a brick wall (the others normally are just a hole in the ground with a grass fence around it.) When i asked to use it, they had to use a pickaxe to open the hole, which was a shoebox-sized hole in the ground. Interesting!!

Foundations for Farming came across the Tazvita community as a result of one lady called Sally who has been working with some of the community members for many years. She asked Foundations to send one of their trainers – Duncan – to teach them about some of the conservation farming principles so that they may be better able to provide for themselves and their families. Duncan has now been 3 times in the past few months, and each time seeing huge improvement in the development of their plots. Firstly, understand that all of the families in this community have some kind of physical disability. They’re were blind people, people missing legs or in wheelchairs, deaf people and everything in between. In previous trainings, Duncan was explaining to me that they were SO enthusiastic to learn these new farming techniques that they were getting out of their wheelchairs to dig the holes and get involved. Even the blind people were getting stuck in, and used all their other senses to calculate the size of their fields and feeling around so they knew how big to dig the holes, and how far apart etc. So amazing!

At the time that I went, we walked around everyones houses and plots and Duncan was giving them pointers about how to dig their holes, how to mulch better, and about how to make organic pesticides etc. I couldn’t understand a word but he was answering all of their questions and they seemed to look pleased with his answers! You can see by the photos that they were all listening intently! I tried very hard to cuddle all of the babies, but they all cried when I got too close because they were scared of my white skin. They all loved my attempts at speaking Shona, I got laughed at a lot but I thank God for allowing me to go there and just love those people, and do my best to make them feel special. Eventually, a little boy called Jeffery decided that I was ok and held my hand the entire time. And then he ate my sandwich, so that was bonding, I guess.

My favourite family was one of a blind man. He also had some kind of dwarfism and physical disability but was completely blind. Theres a picture of him and i, his wife and two kids. They were obviously very poor, but the rows of holes in his field were the straightest of everybody’s!! He had also dug a well all by himself, it was at least 2m in diameter, and so deep that I couldn’t even see the bottom! I was absolutely blown away. This man, who lives in a stick-and-mud house, in the middle of nowhere, can still do such amazing things.

Only days after I visited, we got some awesome news!! $30,000 worth of funding came through for the “I was Hungry” campaign. This is specifically for the Tazvita community, and we are now planning for 30 of the community members, as well as a couple local politicians and Agritex officers to come to the Foundations for Farming base in Harare (where i’m living at the moment) for a two week training!!! Praise the Lord!!

So there will most likely be another long update about how this training goes. It’s intense, but they are cramming in a full conservation agriculture training course, an Alpha Christian course, family and finance management training into 12 days. It is going to absolutely turn the lives of these people, their community and families and the reputation of disabled people in Zimbabwe upside down. Poverty alleviation and reaching out to the poor with the Gospel is the heart of what Foundations does, and I am so blessed to be able to see the ways in which they truly are doing that!! So exciting!!!