Rufaro Makamure

I am relieved that I found the lost dog. It has a proper home now, until it finds it's original owner.

I met with the man who has been said to be having "our" dog, and when I asked him about it, he just asked me who had told me he had the dog. I choked in my statement, his friend is the one who told me that he had it, and the tone the man used made me not to be sure whether it was a good idea to say out his friend's name. I cannot report him because it's not even my dog. SPCA people never showed up.

It has taken a while, but I have managed to get someone to adjust the chickens' cage so that it can open at the bottom. The cost was so much more than I would have ever imagined, but I think it is worth it, the weeds in our yard are growing really fast, it will be straining to keep the weeds in control. If the chicken tractor works this could be an initial solution to the weeding problem. The job will take a day, I am anxious to see the finished job.

My mornings were now starting with a walk to the gate to check on our friendly dog outside, and his reaction was never disappointing. He would stand on his two hind legs with the two front ones pressed on the gate while his tail wagged. He would bounce up and down, making high-pitched playful barks, as I drew near to greet him. I didn't know that his presence was growing on me until yesterday, when I did not see him. My heart sank, and I was left with a hollow feeling. This dog did not leave on its own accord. We had heard whistles in the night, but we were too scared to go out. We had not found the dog's owner yet, and we were still waiting for the SPCA people to come. I felt angry towards whoever had taken it. The character of a person who sneaks in the night to steal a dog is questionable, and it's making me wonder if he will take good care of the dog.

As evening was drawing, I found out who had taken the dog. My plan is to actively look for the real owner and bring him to the dog thief to get his dog. In as much as it was a stray dog, it looked like the owner had taken good care of it before, so I will see if he wants his dog back.

My fathers, that I spoke about earlier will be coming in the next week. We have managed to have the roof leaks fixed and now we are painting two rooms that people spend most time in.

I know there are bigger issues with our house structurally, but it's really important for the house to be presentable for a temporary period because it's not going to be what I say that will matter, but it's how we live that is going to leave a great mark. We have not reached the stage of fixing our house yet, but we are borrowing the future idea of an esthetically pleasing home and we will show case it in the present moment. It is possible to live a very decent lifestyle in my neighborhood and as a regenerative farmer, if we take good care of our environment and this is the picture I am going to try and paint. We are lucky because we had a lot of onions to sell for the month, and we are using this money together with  some help from our other sister to fix the house, at least the lounge and dining area.

We had some peanut butter deliveries to do yesterday, and most of the customers were the elderly women who watched us grow. I took time yesterday to watch how others are around the dog that's outside our gate. They are so calm, and he doesn't jump at them. I tried this, and it's working, I can now get out of the gate without too much obstruction from the dog. He still jumps at me, but the actions are not as much as before. When we went to sell peanut butter, two random people at different times talked to us about this dog, and both of them had the same advice. Apparently, most people who saw the post I sent in the community WhatsApp group are convinced that this is not just an ordinary dog. They think that there is an evil spirit that was put in the dog, and the moment we take this dog in is when we give control to whoever sent it. Both of them advised that we find a way of getting rid of the dog. One of the things we were told to do is to take coarse salt  and throw a lot of it at the dog  commanding it to leave us alone. Because of how no one knows for sure things that happen in the spirit I am not going to disregard what these women said, nor hold the things they said to be facts, I am going to find a neutral thing to do. The SPCA team I called said they do not have transport to come and look at the dog, so they will get in touch with me whenever they can come for it. My neighbor said he saw someone who was looking for his dog and he  gave him the description of 'our' dog. It would be ideal if we could get the dog a home. After what these women were saying, adopting the dog is out of the question now. We will continue to care of it from outside the gate, and I will try and actively look for the guy who claimed to be the owner of the dog.

I managed to finish both the tasks yesterday. The water harvesting pit has not collected water for the season yet, but a few hours after I left the plot, it rained heavily, I am hoping it's going to rain enough to fill the  pit up. There is a lot of building that's been happening since I dug the water harvesting pit, and it has resulted in changes occurring to how the water flows into our yard. I hope we will still get enough to fill up the pit, like it used to be in the past years.

The chilies I planted are already big plants. I want to see if they will grow to give us some chillies, I think they will. We shared the money we got from selling the onions as well as mint and it was enough for us to split between our two families and together with our regular income from the choumollier beds, the money we received can buy us a small grocery for our families. All this while, mai Kumbi has been staying at the plot mainly for the house, and now we are making baby steps towards her staying because she can actually earn some income at the place. The main reason why I grew the big chillie plants is so that we won't have to wait long before it can give us fruits. The man who bought mint was asking about chillies, so since we only have choumollier to sell fir his month, because the onions are as good as finished, if I start adding other products, we can have a consistent amount of income that can allow us to buy some groceries for ourselves permanently. If we achieve this, we will then upgrade to earning money that covers household basics.
The other product we are waiting for is beans, we hope there is a month when our income will be cushioned by the bean sales.

My plan for today is to plant some chillie plants at the plot, which my sister got from a friend of hers. Then, I  also need to fill up a section of the water harvesting pit to allow the banana plant, which is inside the pit, to grow its roots on a bigger area. It looks stunted, and I think it's because there is not enough growing space for it.
Getting out of the gate is becoming more and more difficult for me. Our visitor dog still stays at our gate and when I am getting out of the gate, he/she jumps at me and I do like him ( I think he is male, I never can tell) a lot,  but I don't know what his actions mean and I get into a panic mode when he does this, I am not sure how things will be like if we carry on like this. When I was leaving to go to the plot, he walked me for quite a distance, and I was trying to tell him to go back home, and he wasn't having it. He even barked at me, and it really freaked me out, so I screamed, and he backed away a little and again started following me. He only went back home when I pretended to pick a stone up. I called the SPCA people so that we can get help with him and also for them to give us guidance if adopting him is an option. They said if the dog is not listening to me its probably because I do not have a commanding voice. The dog is better when my sister is talking to it, I don't know what I am going to do because we really want to adopt it.

I am glad I ended up inviting my dorm mate to the musical, and I didn't even need to worry about paying for his ticket. I am now going back home, and from just this random encounter, I have an even increased drive to get objectives and goals done. The things the young man mentioned he had done and the skills he possessed made me realize there is a lot more that can be done in a day than I am already doing, so I need to work on this.

My uncle, who hosted me after the funeral, stays in Harare, the capital city. When I was leaving to go back home, my sister told me she was paying for us to go and watch a Christmas play which will be showing in Harare, so I had to sleep in the big city again for an extra day. I was, of course, excited because Christmas used to be my favorite holiday, and to do something related to it feels good. I found a cheap place to sleep for the night, which is a hostel. I met a very young boy whom I found interesting. He is in the country all by himself working on some papers so that he can work in Zimbabwe. He is American, and he said he wanted to experience a different life during the beginning of his working years, and then he would go back home. His courage is what drew my attention. He has been to so many places and how he was describing the number of jobs he applied to across the world, for him to get to work outside his country,  added on to my growing realization that first world work ethics are so different from what I had imagined. The guy looks very young, but the level of responsibility he has is very high. He is so comfortable in his skin, and when I was talking to him, it's as if something cleared. When I went to sit outside by myself, I could suddenly tell the differences in how different people were speaking, both for locals and  those that are not. The people who work at the hostel are very humble to an extent where the politeness crosses the line to being timid. One local guy, who was a guest as well, had so much freedom as he spoke, and he sounded like he was not asking for permission to be himself. I want this way of living where you can respect others but at the same time you don't automatically feel you have to serve people or that something is wrong with what you are wearing or how you look or speak, everytime another person comes into your space.

The guy who visited our country has nothing to do for the whole weekend and there is this play I am going to. I feel that no one should ever feel lonely anywhere in this world, whether you are around people you know or not, I am going to invite him to join us and I hope the tickets are affordable for him, if not, I am fighting my thoughts. One part of me says it's no coincidence we got to talk, I automatically become his host with some limits, and the other thought is saying in this world, people mind their own business so I should not be bothered. I hope I do the right thing because I can only live this moment once, where I get to determine what kind of world I want to live in.

My trip was meant to be for supporting a family member in their very low moment, but it ended up being giving to me. The funeral I went to delayed, because the grave was so difficult to dig. The program was supposed to start at 9 am, but they were not done digging. When they finished it was almost 12 noon and apparently its not advised to bury a person at noon, so we had to wait until after lunch. When everything was finished it was too late for me to travel back home, so I slept over at one of my uncle's places. We went round his place, as he was showing us around and I saw a lot of banana plants with a lot of shoots. I was given some for my sister's project, my sister had seen them in her hometown and they were going for $5each, and I got them for free.