Digging for Food

Walking to work, I took a back road, behind the Embassies that line the usual route to work along the main San Nujoma road.

I walked past a man digging the soil by the road-side, with rows of maize planted alongside him.

Later, I asked one of the Save the Children drivers about this: were people allowed to just cultivate any patch of ground in Harare?

An average sized family in Zimbabwe, he said, gets through one 20-25kg bag of mealie meal a month – this costs US$4, which many families do not have to spare.

A small patch of land, on the other hand, can grow enough maize to feed a family, with only US$1 to pay to grind the maize into mealie meal.

It is not allowed to cultivate land in the city, but many people have no choice other than to do this.