A Room with a View

I was recently doing one of those map things you find on facebook where you fill in all of the countries you have visited and it highlights them on the globe. I still have a lot of places to go, but what caught my attention is that I have lived in 5 different countries on 4 continents! 5 might not sound like many, but for a 26 year old who, until she was 21, never imagined leaving the Maritimes, it is a lot. (If you are trying to do the math and it is not adding up, don’t forget I spent a term in Finland during university.)

I often get the rather annoying question “what place do you like more: A or B?” It is annoying because there is no way to give a satisfactory answer. If I make a definite choice, people think I am lying to please them, if I say there are things I like about both, it is a cop-out.

It didn't take me long to find a home
for my bird poster on the walls of my
new place.

I’ve been in Zimbabwe a few weeks now, and soon people will be asking me how it compares. Every place has its ups and downs to be sure, but instead of comparing I’m going to give you a short intro to Zim by sharing some of the things I am thankful for about my new place. The little things that, bit by bit, are starting to make it feel like home.

First of all, I love my apartment. It is one bedroom, but the rooms are HUGE. The 10-foot ceilings and door handles at shoulder height add to the effect. I’m on the 5^th floor; a room with a great view. Added bonus, the lift (installed in ’59) actually works. I love random decorative pillars in the bedroom where I hang my hammock. I love the big windows. I love the view.

One section of the wardrobe devoted
to my tailor-made dresses I've amassed over
the years- most from Mozambique. 

My giant closet is awesome. It takes up one whole wall. My colleague Keke lives in the same building on the 3^rd floor. We discovered an outdoor second hand clothing market not 3 mins walk from our house. We also discovered this is a dangerous thing.  I suspect my wardrobe will fill up fast. Any of you remember my shoe collection from last year? Sadly I had to leave some behind in Moz, but I’ve added three more since I moved to Bulawayo.

KD made with real butter and milk feels like home. The KD is actually from home, but the butter and uht milk, and pretty much everything else I could want are available in one of many supermarkets walking distance from my place.

The MCC office is also just 10 mins walk from my house. The city is impossible to get lost in. It is a grid and every avenue that runs east-west is numbered sequentially starting from the north to the south end. The streets are wide enough for an ox-cart team to make a 180-degree turn; even though Bulawayo is the second biggest city in the country, it doesn’t feel too crowded or congested.

Playing around with watercolour last Sunday…
a mostly finished painting if Brier Island,  Nova Scotia. 

I’m thankful for quiet alone time to knit, paint, cross-stitch, work out, watch TV, and read in my hammock. Last week I finished a book in 24 hours (the Maze Runner). First time I’ve done that since middle school.

 

Keke lives two floors below me and we go exploring the city together whenever we are free. We are each other’s mirror at the market and each other’s compass as we try to remember where that neat little Indian grocers was.

I love that there is a washing machine in Keke’s place and I don’t have to wash anything by hand. After three years. Forget sliced bread, washing machines are the best invention ever.

I love that Victoria Falls is less than 6 hours away by bus. Need I say more?

Impressive right? Or would be if you could actually see the falls.  We got soaked with the spray. 

When I posted these pictures on Facebook someone pointed out that it looks a lot better  without the hotels and casinos. Niagara is impressive, don't get me wrong, but this is something else. 

It took me a few weeks to find the right one, but I have found my soul-mate. One-person tea pots are hard to come by apparently. I've heard it gets cold in Bulawayo come May so I've gotten a head start on a cozy for her. It wasn't until I had my first proper pot of tea that I finally started to feel at home.  

Impressions of Lesotho

     My job is in full swing now. My co-worker Keke and I are busy recruiting for MCC’s Seed exchange program in Southern Africa and finding placements for the participants with our various agriculture/food-security related partners. In order to do this, we have the great privilege of traveling and visiting these partners in person.

The Tete countryside is beautiful in the rainy season. 

At Thole dam in Tete

      Our first stop after some orientation in Johannesburg was the sand-dam project in Tete, Mozambique. It was great connect again with old friends and colleagues. After showing Keke around my old stomping grounds, I had the great pleasure to accompany her to her home country of Lesotho. The official purpose of our visit was to see the MCC partner, but more meaningful to me was getting to see Keke in her home country and get to know her family and friends. Even before we got to her hometown, it was clear Keke was in her element. Not 30 minutes after stepping foot in the country she was bargaining my bride price with our taxi driver. She set it at 20 cows, which the driver seemed to think was a bit steep. Since I don’t speak Sesotho, I was blissfully unaware of the negotiations going on beside me. 

      After arriving in Lesotho Friday afternoon we went to Paballong, an HIV/AIDS care centre, which strives to care for the holistic well-being of people living with HIV/AIDS. The caretaker gave us a lovely tour of the place.  In addition to the clinic, which provides free care for any secondary sicknesses, they have a child-care centre, youth program, and a thriving farm which provides income for the project, food for the visiting patients, and serves as a demonstration farm for those who want to learn vegetable gardening in order to provide for their families. We ate fresh peaches and grapes from the tree and vine until we could eat no more.

View of the farm and peach orchard at Paballong. They are currently setting up a drip irrigation system to help conserve water during times of shortage.

      On Saturday we took the bus to Keke’s parents’ house. We spent the day relaxing. Her brother tried over the course of a couple of hours to explain the rules of cricket as we watched on TV. I sort of got the rules, but still don’t get why anyone would invent a game that takes days to play.

      In the late afternoon we ate more peaches.

Sporting Keke's father's Basotho hat, holding a bucket of peaches. They peaches are small this year due to drought, the size of an apricot, but delicious nevertheless. 

      Sunday morning we went to visit some colleagues of Keke’s that she used to work with. It is an organization that promotes the use of solar “sun stoves.” In a place where wood is scarce and fuel expensive, solar cooking is an excelling idea. They target grandparents who often care for their grandchildren, the parents having left the country to find work. It was the final day of training for this particular community in Mafeteng. We got there a bit late for the training, but just in time to see raisin bread come out of 50 ovens.

Fresh bread!

      Sunday afternoon we made our way to Growing Nations Trust- the poster child of Conservation Agriculture and youth involvement in the country. I finally got to see the place I’ve heard so much about! Keke is a product of their resident training program, and went on to do IVEP where she spent a year in Canada with MCC, and now she is the co-facilitator of Seed. We visited the field on Monday morning, and I got a tour of their fields. Though their hard work and vision did not fail to impress, practical application is suffering this year due to a regional drought. El Niño is having devastating effects on the ground this year. These are subsistence farmers who often have no other source of income besides their farms, and yet they have not planted anything during the rainy season because it has not rained. Even the weeds aren’t growing. We saw the same in Mozambique. People are now hoping for a successful winter crop, which they will harvest in July, assuming they get some late rains that will carry them through. Conserving water and soil humidity is now more important than ever.  This farmer has been diligently applied all of the CA principles on his little plot: he didn’t plough; he deeply mulched the field; intercropped maize and leguminous plants; and applied chicken manure as fertilizer. Neighbours thought this farmer was crazy to work so much to cultivate such a small plot, but the promise of something is better than the certainty of nothing.

Farmer Kelebone showing me his maize/bean plot. Notice the great mulch and excellent example of intercropping. We are standing on the edge so it is hard to see, but the beans are covering the ground between rows of maize. 

An experiment at Growing Nations farm. This field was divided in two:
the half pictured below they let animals to graze- there is no soil cover and some
nasty weeds are taking hold. On the half above, there was no grazing. There is lots
of mulching, and fewer weeds. Wheat was planted in lines using a ripper
on the same day for both fields. but it hasn't rained since. Can you see
which one has germinated? 

In other news, I have moved to Zimbabwe, have received my work permit, and finally have my own apartment in Bulawayo!