Rusape community -- life in rural Zimbabwe

See June 15 for an introduction to Kufunda’s work with Rusape community. Here, I want to share with you my time with Anna, a sparky woman who co-founded “God’s Power,” a women’s knitting collective (pictured here wearing the clothes she knit out of old sacks). I spent the night at her house, with two other women visiting from two other Kufunda-connected rural communities. We quickly discovered that we all love to sing and knit, and we had a really really fun night together!!

We sat in Anna’s kitchen hut and roasted peanuts, sang and shared stories.

I love her creative decorations—newspapers cut into doilies.

In the morning, Anna showed me her super herb garden, packed with more than two dozen medicinal herbs, which she learned about through Kufunda’s herb program. Another creative item: an old bedspring is the garden door.

She also introduced me to her whole family, living in huts dotted around the little compound.

A view of the kitchen hut and maize storage area.

Her composting toilet--Kufunda inspired.

Here is her year’s supply of maize—staple food.

You can see how smokey the kitchen fire is—no ventilation in the hut. As you can imagine, a lot of rural African women and children have lung/breathing ailments.

We walked back to the road to meet everyone and had more fun singing and dancing in the street!