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Isdore Guvamombe recently in MBIRE
In Zimbabwe, mid-October is when all and sundry start casting one eye to the sky and another to the ground in anticipation of rain.

But in Mbire, there is a community of the Doma people, who are yet to fully adopt and adapt to the art of farming for survival.

Yirira Communal Lands under Chief Chisunga in Mbire district, near Zimbabwe’s border with Zambia, is a place where the geography that flung it to almost anonymity came with the extra condemnation of nature.

Here, the vagaries of nature, chiefly drought, unbearable heat and the attendant maladies such as malaria, present a continuing menace that the people of this area contend with every day.

Yet, even if one becomes hardened to these elements, not so many would resist the hunger that gnaws the belly.

Members of the Kafamauro family, together with about 100 other families settled there, can neither write nor read and they are battling with the transition from being part of the larger nomadic Doma mountain people to permanent settlers, as per dictates of modern life.

No cash is in circulation here, no livestock is kept, no lobola is paid during marriage rites.

Kanyepi Kafamauro is a mother of four and part of the Doma people.

She has never been to school and neither has her husband and their children seen the door of a classroom. All they know is bush life — hunting, fishing and gathering.

They have never tilled the land, but they know every tree by its name, they know every animal by its name and indeed they know every hillock, hill, mountain, stream, river and pool in the area.

In neighbouring Chewore National Park, the place from which they used to hunt for meat and gather food — mainly honey and fruits, National Parks rangers have declared them poachers and sealed off the area.

It is now a no-go area and they are typically between a rock and hard surface.

Gnawed by hunger, their bellies rumble in protest, day in and day out. Each day that comes and passes is a struggle for survival and not for living, since there, living becomes a luxury, but survival is a must.

At sunrise, Kafamauro’s ghostly figure is hued by the silhouetted horizon, which she uses as a clock to start boiling katunguru beans.

Katunguru is highly toxic and poisonous. Under normal circumstances, villagers use it to poison fish. When chopped into pieces in its raw state, katunguru kills every living organism in a pool.

It can easily kill a person within minutes. But it being October, these are lean times and starvation is stalking the Yirira villagers.

Kafamauro boils katunguru the whole day until sunset, intermittently throwing away the frothing boiling water and pouring fresh one.

She repeats the process seven or eight times a day, to detoxicate the beans. The other fruits are now scarce or out of season.

“When the water is boiling, but no longer frothing, then we can start eating the katunguru beans,” says Kafamauro. We make sure the beans boil throughout the day.

“If you eat the beans at the early stage of boiling you die and if you eat after boiling for half the day you get very sick, but when you boil the whole day, you are safe.

“The cook has to be one and very thorough to ensure that the family is safe. That is what we are having for relish.

“It does not taste good, but it fills the stomach.

“For the sadza, we dig for a wild tuber garatondo. It is a potato like tuber the size of a man’s fist. After digging it out, we soak it in water for a week. Each day we throw away the water and put fresh one.

“On the eighth day, we crush the tuber and dry it. After drying, we pound it into powder (like mealie-meal) then use it to cook porridge. This is how we are surviving.’’

But Sekuru Chimhawu, the spirit medium and custodian of the Doma people, thinks Command Agriculture and the Presidential Input Support Scheme should also target the Doma people to enable them to settle down.

“Our people are not farmers,” he says. “Life is unbearable here. Our original place is Chewore, but we are no longer allowed to hunt and gather food there.

“There are armed rangers and if you go there, you will be killed. Hunger is also threatening to kill us. We go on empty stomachs for many days than we go with full or half full stomachs.

“We have been promised that the Government will come and assist us become real farmers, but we are still waiting. Nothing is happening. Day in day out, we suffer from hunger.’’

Regarded by many as the autochthon of the land, Sekuru Chimhawu said he was prepared to help Government penetrate the Doma community, as long as inputs and implements are made available.