Water everywhere, but no water!

villager had the singular honour of visiting a “foreign” land famed for edible stones, rivers that serpentine with sacred ancestral liquid excreta that everyone is afraid to touch and cheeky goblins with fierce names.

Does anyone know of a Goblin by the name Hany’anani? Call in Masvingo if you so like.
This place is in total contrast to the land of milk, honey and dust.
The first, being a land of characteristic dearth and the latter being the land of characteristic plenty.

Back in the village, in Guruve, the grey-haired say a man who swallows a mango seed surely knows that he has a big opening, for, as nature would dictate, the seed would want to find its way out one day.
In the village and of course, elsewhere, the stomach in never a permanent place for any swallowed substance, not even a stone. This villager will swallow a mango seed for the purposes of the people of Masvingo.
His heart lies there and his heart is bleeding too!

This villager’s sleek and sharp-tongued brothers and sisters from Masvingo, that land that sired Munhumutapa the conqueror, who unfortunately or fortunately died in the land of milk, honey and dust in search of salt, milk and honey, are a funny lot.
The village soothsayer, that ageless fountain of wisdom and knowledge says “the people of Masvingo never learn or rather they are educated and not learned!”

We will come back to the soothsayer later.
You see, the land of milk, honey and dust is so special that Munhumutapa, abandoned one of the world’s first cities.
Did the kind not abandon that whole stone structure to move north in search of salt in Mbire and as the old adage and prophecies would have it: “Waenda Mbire, waenda chose . . . Waenda Mbire haadzoke” he did not return to Masvingo?

Those with cotton wool head in the village say he met with his death at Tuwuyu Tusere (the eight baobab trees) in what is today Nyagomo (bastardised to Negomo) area of Mutota ward, itself named after Nyatsimba Mutota.
But the full import of this installment is that Masvingo is the cradle of our civilisation. The villagers there were among the first ones to receive “people without knees” as they slouched upwards after Fort Thuli, the villagers in Masvingo are the custodians of the Great Zimbabwe National Monument after which this great country was named.

Historically, the people of Masvingo had access to education. The Zvobgo family is an outstanding one.
This villager will not delve into how many cattle the Zvobgo family would have slaughtered at graduations or really slaughtered. That is subject for another moon.
As history would have it again, the people of Masvingo were to get the first tarred road in this country and hey, they were proud of the cement road, hence Masvingo Netara, became part of this great country’s lingua franca.

This villager is not yet done with the persona of Masvingo: “wezhira wezhara, wezheve hombe ane gwendo, gwuya gweGweru, gwakagugwa ngegugwe agwara chigwere chaigwadza!”
Masvingo has the biggest distinction of housing Zimbabwe’s largest inland water body, Lake Mtirikwi, which this great country does not share with anyone, unlike Kariba, which it shares with Zambia.
Masvingo has beautiful women too, ask this villager, who married there but Masvingo has the biggest distinction of being stalked by hunger and starvation, year after year that we, sons-in-law have the daunting task of sending tonnes of maize from the land of milk, honey and dust.

This villager can remind you dear reader of that old woman from Chivi, who at the point of starvation, boiled stones and drank the soup. Is it not Masvingo dear reader, that has a singular distinction of siring the famous goblin, Hany’ananai, hence the famous adage, Hany’ananai chidoma ChekwaChivi.
In the intermittent droughts of the early 1980s and 1990s, there was a story of a donkey that mauled chicken as an antidote to conquering hunger.

In Masvingo, Tugwi, Tugwana, Mtirikwi, Runde and Chiredzi serpentine through the villages on their intricate journey to the Indian Ocean as they empty one into another yet there is hunger everywhere.
In Masvingo today, Muzvwi, Manyuchi, Mtirikwi and Bangala dams, carry water to the sugar plantations past rustic villages and the villagers there watch it go past, without harnessing it.
This villager is aware that there is a 1960s legislation that gives the villagers 10 percent water rights for all the water that passes through on its way to the sugar plantations at Hippo Valley and Triangle.

When the canal and river channels transport that water the villager should harness the 10 percent and as we speak today, Masvingo would never be stalked by hunger and starvation.
The village soothsayer says that limpid and translucent liquid passing through the canals is not sacred excreta from the ancestors gone, but water to irrigate the land and harvest.
If the people of Masvingo are as educated as they claim, as knowledgeable as they claim and as clever as they claim, why are they not harnessing the water and turning that vast province into the green lung of Zimbabwe.

The land of milk, honey and dust, which sired this villager is foreign to hunger and starvation. The stories about hunger sound like tell-tales from foreign land or oral tradition.
The point is that, all and sundry from Masvingo must invest in irrigation schemes to complement Government efforts for, in the village, hunger is humiliating and dehumanising.
This villager knows that the Government has established some irrigation schemes in Masvingo but that is not enough without the sons and daughters of this land of goblins, edible stones and sacred waters applying themselves to the cause.

There is no justification whatsoever for the people in Masvingo to face starvation when they have the biggest water body per province, if the dams and rivers are put together.
There is no justification for the people of Masvingo to brag about being educated in this and that without applying themselves in eradicating the hunger that has stalked and humiliated generation after generation.
What purpose does that education serve if their parents are always staring starvation in the face?

It is akin to bragging about one’s manhood at a beer-drinking binge and under-perform when night falls.
Of course, there are good examples: This villager was quite impressed by Rupike Irrigation Scheme, where they must have copied from the land of milk, honey and dust. They are very impressive.
Mushandike Irrigation Scheme is largely a ghost of itself but it can still rise from the ashes.

What provoked this installment is the mantra by the people of Masvingo that they have been marginalised in terms of development, yet they have marginalised themselves by failing to be proactive against hunger.
The land is there, fertile and prime even. The people are there, highly educated but never committing themselves to the land. The water is there, gushing and flowing stealthily past the villages, where it is ignored like urine. This is a case of water, water everywhere but no water.

The people of Masvingo must reinvent themselves; they must re-kit and re-tool existing irrigation schemes. They must tap into the running water and turn their fortunes with irrigation schemes.
Irrigation is the way and it should be an area of serious investment, otherwise the people of Masvingo will forever remain stalked by hunger, hunger and hunger.

There are too many sons and daughter of Masvingo who have made it in Zimbabwe’s business sector and it is high time they come together and invest in what brings food to the province.
The ribald stories about edible stones, raunchy goblins and other unpleasant rebukes over food shortages, especially in grains, can be dead and buried, with just a few investments in irrigation.
The village soothsayer says the problem with the people of Masvingo is that they are educated too much. “Too much education confuses.”

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