It's more than just farming

I am beginning to think that subsistence farming in Zimbabwe is more than just a means to grow food. Farming is a culture, a conversation, a thread that binds people together, a reason for being so to speak. These thoughts came about after the following events:

I had a conversation with an old lady from Chivi recently. Due to lack of sufficient rains in her part of Chivi, it has been five years since she ate any produce from her land. So the way I worked it out in my non the wiser head was that surely a combination of the 5 years she invested in her land and reaped  nothing and the weatherman’s early assessment that there would be little rains in 2016, surely surely she would not attempt to plant in 2016. When I expressed my thoughts out loud her reaction made me conclude that I had uttered the most absurd notion she had ever heard.

“Kurega kurima, ndigoti ndaitei. Musi uno chaiye wandakatodyara. Ndinga rega kurima iwo munda ndiinawo. Vamwe vachinosakura ndakati goo kugara asi kudya ndichida. Ndinongoita iyo Tariro yemurimi nevamwe” (to not plant? To what end? Just the other day I was planting. How can I not plant when I have a field. How can I sit while others are working in their fields and still expect to eat. I will just continue to hope the way a farmer should)

The other event was a conversation I overhead in Jerera, where an elderly man was relating the state of his crops. Taking time to describe the amount of rains that they had experienced, the state of the crop and the plans he had for the field. He was distressed that the crops were withering under the scorching sun but optimistic that the rains will come soon. It was a conversation both sad and hopeful in one breath. It was a conversation that I am sure is being had 10 000 times across the country everyday.

The last event was a drive; acres and acres of land that had nothing to show for themselves expect green sad looking maize plants. Acres and acres of seeds, fertilizer, time and labour that may not produce the desired result by the looks of things. But because it is who we are we will do it again and again, year after year…

If you sent seed and fertilizer to your kin in the rural areas this season please explain to me why? Wouldn’t it have been better to use the money to buy maize later?