CARE ZIMBABWE Rumbidzai’s journey of resilience and hope
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Rumbidzai’s journey of resilience and hope

Godfrey Muvhuti August 26, 2024

Rumbidzai Mhuka (54), a farmer from Zaka, Zimbabwe, vividly recalls her childhood in the 1980s when her community used to receive abundant rainfall and enjoy bountiful harvests. "Back then, Ward 18 of Zaka Rural District used to receive around 900mm of rain per year. Everything seemed well, and we survived through farming."

Over the last three decades, life changed drastically for Rumbidzai and her community. The once-reliable rainfall patterns they had grown accustomed to in the 1980s have become increasingly erratic and scarce, with her ward now receiving less than 350mm of precipitation per year, compared to the previous 900mm.

Despite these challenging climate conditions, Rumbidzai and her family have managed to continue putting food on the table. However, their situation was further complicated when Rumbidzai’s husband passed away unexpectedly in 2000, leaving her as the sole breadwinner for her family at the young age of 30.

Her only wish to make things better was, “If only I can have a permanent and reliable source of water, I believe I can do wonders and be able to feed the whole community,” remarked Rumbidzai, her voice tinged with sadness.

Fast forward to 2023, what made her plight worse was the El Niño-induced drought that had been predicted for the 2023-2024 agricultural season. For Rumbidzai, this meant that the food situation was going to get worse.

However, her fortunes started to turn when she participated in a resilience design training program led by CARE Zimbabwe under the USAID Takunda Project in her village at on one of the Lead farmers’ household in her area, focusing on soil and water conservation.

“Last year (2022-2023 Agriculture season), we did not harvest much as a family because of these inconsistent rainfall patterns, so when I heard about this training that helps farmers in dry regions to excel better through harvesting water and improving soil fertility whilst at the same time improving availability of various foods at the household level, I attended at once,” said Rumbidzai

After attending the training, she decided to apply the same principles at her compound by working with her family and those around her neighborhood.

Rumbidzai managed to apply all the resilience design principles she had mastered during the training. Together with her family, they dug two dead level contours and prepared improved interlocking planting basins to enhance soil and water conservation. Despite the lack of rainfall in her ward, she managed to plant with the first rains and harvest 15 bags of crops.

As a family, they consume around 13 bags per year, leaving an excess of two bags.

Rumbidzai said, “We managed to do intercropping, which was being promoted by the USAID Takunda Project, and we planted maize, cowpeas, sweet reeds, watermelons, and pumpkins on the same plot. All these went a long way in improving the availability of various foods at our household, eventually improving our food security situation in a difficult year like this one, where some families did not even manage to harvest a bucket of maize.”

 

In February 2024, Rumbidzai managed to harvest 60 kg of cowpeas, 80 heads of watermelons, and 50 heads of pumpkins from the biodiversity concept that was being promoted under the resilience designs.

“This is a miracle for my family considering that the previous season, where we received higher rainfall, we had failed to harvest the 15 bags that we received this year. We usually require 13 bags, which means we have an excess of two bags. I hope to help other relatives who did not do well,” she exclaimed.

Motivated Rumbidzai added, “My family has food and we are much more stable now. Through the training, Takunda (USAID Takunda Project) has provided me with a fishing rod, which is far more valuable than simply receiving fish. This has empowered me with the skills and tools to reliably provide for my family.”

Going forward Rumbidzai and her family will focus on expanding their resilience- garden plots during the next growing season. “By diversifying our food production, we hope to generate a surplus that we can sell, enabling us to fund other important developments for our household. This is more important and powerful than just getting fish. As a family, next season we hope to prepare more resilience design plots, so that we can have more surplus for us to sell and raise funds for other developments at our household.”

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