Biggie Musemwa: Permaculture Pioneer and Protector of the Poor
I’m passionate about supporting my African brothers and sisters to create a better life for themselves and their communities. Recently, Biggie Musemwa reached out to me to help him to raise the necessary funds to start a permaculture project that could transform the lives of hundreds of people within his local community in Zimbabwe. Over the past couple of weeks I’ve had several lengthy online conversations with him to learn more about this project and his background and motivations, and this article is the result.
Biggie (44) is a farmer and Permaculture Designer currently living in Gatsi Village, which is a village with a population of 2,000 in the Mt Darwin district of Zimbabwe. He has his own land within the village which he uses to grow and sell a variety of crops, vegetables and fruits to support himself and his family, but wants to do something more to help the many poor and needy people within the village. He has recently been in consultations with the Village Head who has offered him 7 hectares of land (17.3 acres) — a sizable area — to develop a Permaculture Centre for the benefit of the whole community. However, this offer is conditional upon him demonstrating that he can develop the land in the manner he envisions and will be withdrawn if it looks like he is unable to do so.
Turning this land into a Permaculture Centre will allow him to provide local youth with the opportunity to work and train alongside him, enabling them to develop the necessary skills to initiate their own permaculture projects on nearby family-owned land. In addition to acquiring crucial expertise in regenerative farming, trainees will be entitled to a proportion of the fruit and vegetables produced, providing them and their families with much-needed nutritional diversity from the wide range of fruit and vegetables that will be grown, including:
· Aubergine
· Avocado
· Banana
· Beans (many different types)
· Cabbage (including Chinese cabbage)
· Cassava
· Carrots
· Cashew (apples and nuts — Google it!)
· Covo (a type of kale)
· Guava
· Kale
· Lemons
· Lettuce
· Mangoes
· Okra
· Onions
· Papaya
· Pawpaws
· Plantain
· Potatoes
· Pumpkins
· Sweet potatoes
· Tomatoes
· Watermelon
· Yam
He anticipates that between 150 to 200 people (including people from other areas of the country and internationals) will train at the permaculture centre each year, for a period of anywhere between one week and three months. They, in turn, will go on to share their knowledge with others, creating a massive multiplier effect in terms of the positive impact that this project will have for people and the environment. He has the vision, motivation and local support to transform this land into an invaluable resource that will benefit the local community for many generations to come; but, as an essential first step, he needs to raise the funds to fence it in as soon as possible or this opportunity will be lost. This will satisfy the Village Head that he is capable of doing something for the benefit of the community with this land and secure his rights to it. It is also essential to do this before he starts growing trees and plants to protect them from the cattle, goats and sheep belonging to other villagers which roam around freely and would otherwise eat the seedlings before they had a chance to grow.
As of the day this article is being published (13th June 2020) we have now successfully raised the $970 (£768) required for fencing costs, which includes:
· $750 for wire
· $150 for fencing poles
· $70 for cement
Volunteers are already on stand-by to help erect this fencing and, working with a team of 15 to 20 volunteers, Musemwa will be able to put up the fencing within a few days and secure the land for the permaculture project for the benefit of the whole community and future generations.
We now want to raise at another $400:
· $200 for construction of a well (to have a water supply on the land)
· $200 for a two-room shelter (for Musemwa and family, and storage of tools)
Additional funding raised will be used to establish the forest garden and orchard through the purchase of tools, grafted fruit trees and seeds.
Why Permaculture?
Permaculture and the creation of forest gardens are a viable solution to some of the most pressing problems facing Africa and Africans today. Livestock overgrazing and unsustainable monocrop agriculture using chemical fertilisers and pesticides (sold to local farmers by the local representatives of profit-driven international corporations) are major causes of land degradation and desertification throughout Africa. The degradation of previously fertile land is creating misery for millions of subsistence farmers throughout the continent and forcing them off their land into the major cities in search of jobs that don’t exist. This mass exodus from the countryside into cities only swells the already overcrowded urban slums (home to two-thirds of the population of sub-Saharan African cities) where living conditions are dire.
Biggie is just one of many thousands of farmers throughout Africa who have recognised the need for change and the potential of permaculture and forest gardens to reverse the destruction of the countryside and provide local populations with both food and income. He comes from a farming family and learned to grow vegetables and crops from a young age, but came to realise the dangers and limitations of his family’s reliance upon artificial fertilisers and pesticides. This understanding led him, from 2012 onward, to start learning everything he could about permaculture and applying it. He is a member of the Permaculture Association (based in Britain) and has studied at the Fambidzanai Permaculture Institute in Harare, the capital of Zimbabwe.
Over the past six years (starting in 2014) he has given away over 5,000 trees to a wide range of organisations, including schools and older people’s homes, as part of what he called the Repair Earth Project. Some of these are fruit trees (e.g. avocado trees) which provide people with a sustainable source of food; while others (e.g. Tipuana trees) are planted, simply, to beautify the local environment, as well as helping to convert atmospheric carbon dioxide into oxygen for the benefit of the whole planet.
In 2017 he worked with locals to create a permaculture demonstration garden in Chitungwiza — a large town of 360,000 people, 25 km south of Harare — where they grew butternuts, cabbage, carrots, covo, kale, pumpkins and tomatoes. In addition to demonstrating the potential of forest gardens to local residents, it provided income and food to the twenty youth who worked with him to establish these gardens. Permaculture Design involves the skilful use of a mixture of different types of trees and plants — each of which performs a different and complementary function — to create a natural ecosystem that can provide a sustainable source of food whilst regenerating, rather than depleting, the natural environment. The forest garden in Chitungwiza gave Biggie a real taste of the extraordinary potential of permaculture. He now wants to take things much further in Gatsi Village by creating an abundant self-regenerative forest garden that is a source of pride and inspiration for the whole community.
Since there was no water supply on the land he had to work with local volunteers to dig a well (something that he will also have to do on the land in Gatsi village).
His wife Crescencia (43), eldest son Talent (20), daughter Theresa (11) and younger sons Tantan (6) and Gideon (3) all appreciate his work and the younger ones enjoy working with him. His elder son, Talent, is limited in his ability to physically contribute as he has a leg disability. However, he is good with numbers and is able to help out with the business side of things. Alongside his work for the family business, he is studying accounting and bookkeeping.
Having established the permaculture centre Musemwa’s next priority will be to do something for the twenty or so orphans in Gatsi village — boys and girls between the ages of 2 and 15 — whose parents have died of AIDS (still a big problem in Zimbabwe). These young boys and girls typically live with uncles and aunts but are generally treated differently from their cousins. Although they are fed and clothed, their diet is often inadequate and they do not receive the love and care that all young children deserve, and need in order to grow up into confident young men and women. Most of them are unable to go to school as their relatives are unable or unwilling to pay the school fees (of only $90 per year). Some of them are employed by local farmers to help herd livestock. Others end up getting involved in crimes such as stealing from houses for which they are severely punished when caught — a tragically sad and painful existence for young children who should be learning and playing with their peers.
Biggie’s ambition is to build a hostel on the land where they can stay and learn practical skills that can give them a better future. In addition to teaching them how to grow vegetables and fruit, he hopes to be able to offer them other practical courses led by members of the community with relevant skills who are willing to donate their time, such as sewing and carpentry. Additionally, he hopes to start a scholarship fund to enable those of them who wish to, and especially the youngest, to receive some formal education.
If you would like to follow the further development of this project feel free to join the Facebook page here.
