Striking the Heart of Travel In Africa

I’ve had a strong desire to visit a permaculture site in Zimbabwe ever since I became involved in a project there almost three years ago.

I met the developer of the Umuntu Permaculture project, my friend Bigboy “Biggie” Musemwa, through the former Grassroots Coalition for Environmental and Economic Justice, where we both were members and I was on the board of directors.

A few years ago “Biggie” had been granted an 18-acre tract of land to create a self-sustaining farm and education center using natural land-use practices that will help his African neighbors thrive.

I was impressed with Biggie’s concerted efforts to create a sustainable farm for the residents of the remote village where he’d grown up near rural Mt. Darwin, about 250 kilometers south of his home in Harare, the capital city of Zimbabwe.

I’d been traveling on my retirement pension since 2016 and found it fulfilling to use some of my excess dollars each month to help various non-profit organizations around the world. Biggie and I became acquainted and his growing agricultural project on a site in Mount Darwin became a favorite destination for my contributions.

I was pleased to watch the progress from my vantage points on the road far away while at the same time helping him build new fences, raise structures, dig wells and, most recently, purchase goats and donkeys for the farm.

Soon I wanted to see the farm itself. But one thing or another always took me off track, including COVID. Yet my desire for Africa never waned and my opportunity to visit Africa finally arrived this year.

It was a rigorous and demanding trip, easily the most challenging trip I’ve experienced in more than five years traveling through six continents. Yet despite the stress, visiting the permaculture site at Mount Darwin was perhaps the most emotionally rewarding experience I’ve had.

Most countries I visit are poor, but the poverty, desperation and want of basic needs for so many people in the two south central Africa countries I visited – Zambia and Zimbabwe – was painful. Yet the appreciation shown to me for my visit to this corner of the world was heartwarming.

After a 10-day stop in Cairo, I headed south by air for Harare, where Biggie makes his home. Mount Darwin is a few hours’ drive south.

We planned a three-day trip to Mount Darwin, where a handful of people live full-time. However many small surrounding villages feed the nearby Chakoma School, an institution in Mount Darwin with about 1100 students who attend classes from primary grades through high school. Biggie himself is a Chakoma graduate.

Biggie arranged a community-wide welcoming presentation for my arrival in cooperation with the school, whose students performed traditional African dances to greet my arrival.

The spirited yellow-and-black clad dancers performed spectacularly against the green outdoor backdrop of the sub-Saharan African landscape. The dancing was outstanding, enthusiastic and authentic. I was impressed by their talents and was emotionally overwhelmed by the warmth of their reception.

I was asked to speak and expressed my deep appreciation for being there, while overwhelmed by the spontaneity and spirit of their greeting.

Following the ceremonies, the school’s teachers, officials and students staged their own impromptu celebration, dancing and singing spontaneously in thanks for the gifts of pens, notebooks, rulers, and a modest cash donation, that I presented to the school.

Local government officials and crowds of villagers from miles around attended the festivities.

I slept on my yoga mat on the concrete floor of a two-room brick hut at Mt. Darwin. My hosts would heat water over an open fire for me to bathe bucket-style. Toilets were holes in the floor of the outhouses where at night only the moon and stars lit the roofless, plumbing-free structures.

None of that mattered, though; I was there not for luxury travel, but to feel the heart and soul of an authentic experience.

I had found it, an emotional understanding of the deep connections shared among people inhabiting far-flung lands, cultures and languages. It’s a standard of travel rarely reached; its pursuit the answer to why I stay traveling.

I would awake in my hut and walk out into the cool, black, quiet of the African night, staring at the stars, contemplating my place in this cosmos, my good fortune to find such a place, where I could learn so much from people so happy that I am there. 

Come daylight, the surrounding plains, green with vegetation and the scattering of brown thatched-roof huts of tiny villages, were stunningly beautiful with mountains meeting the sky in the distance.

The highlights were definitely the dancers and welcoming celebration, for which villagers walked from miles around to gather on the grassy soccer pitch, where most days the donkeys, goats and cattle graze.

The next day we went to the Chakoma School where volunteer computer tech Comfort Morowa, who joined us on the trip from Harare, gave valuable advice to teachers and serviced a couple of dozen old, well-used laptop computers that the primary school students use at the school.

Back on the farm, chickens foraged for feed among the huts, livestock roamed about looking for new young shoots of grass; a new garden was being prepared to grow healthy, life-giving vegetables; bee hives were being readied for pollination and honey production; and the many fruit trees planted all around the village for food and a better environment were beginning to mature.

These are the seeds of Biggie’s dream, and there I felt the raw energy of the human spirit driving that dream toward a productive future.

I felt it in the rich soil between my toes; I heard it in the bleating and braying of the animals that I helped put on the land; I saw it in the people working so hard with so little for a future with a promise that their children can build upon.

Their heartfelt thanks reverberate in my soul, and I came away enriched with a deeper, more profound understanding of life in the world.

Experiences such as these are what I travel for – living, learning and celebrating together with people united in the pursuit of a better life.

Learn more about the Umuntu Permaculture projects by clicking here.