Deep in some rural communal lands in Zimbabwe the disappearing of forests ,grass ,soils and clean water is a burden to all rural folk to have a sustainable life.Focusing on Buhera,Dotito,Makoni and Mutare districts ,women of considerable ages and children ,many of them barefooted walk for considerable distances carrying heavy buckets in search of clean water and in some instances ,carrying bundles of firewood.
While men and older boys and girls migrate to urban areas like Mutare and Harare looking for employement in most cases difficult to comeby.
Clean water is scarce ,as well as food because of perenial droughts .Firewood the most commonly used source of energy is now available far away from people's settlements.
As a result many women and their children endured many hardships they come across.
One of the major problems as ,Mrs Gavi of Mutare district narrates is the scarcity of water for domestic use and their animals to drink because of siltation in of local streams.
The acute water shortages have consequently forced over 100 holdholds to wrestle from the single borehole to get just a 15litre bucket of water the whole day.
This doesn't mean that there is no boreholes in the areas.In Mutare district for example many boreholes are lying idle laking maintenance and awareness to the local people on how to use these facilities properly.Over thirty boreholes are no longer in use in Mutare west alone.
Most of the rural people earn a living through tilling the land.However most of the land is no longer producing enough because of erratic rainfall ,lack of inputs such as seeds,fertilisers and ox to pull these ploughs.
Some districts do not have irrigation facilities so farmers rely on rainfall for their crops production.
Sadly those who migrated to urban to seek emploment don't comeback with enough to help those left at home.Instead they comeback without anything after their seasonal contract work ceased.
Traditionally African women are well known for participating in roles such as crop production ,livestork care and providing food ,water and energy to their families.
These days the norm is unsustainable because of the depleting rate of natural resources such as trees to provide firewood ,and poles to build huts.The grass as livestork folder is continously burnt which threatens its growth to feed both domestic and wildlife,especially during the years with below normal rainfall. This problem of veld fires now caused many deaths around the country. The most painful one is of a Concession mother who burned to death with her three children caused by unneccessary veld fires. Usually pupils in schools taught and learnt that velds can only be suitable to be burned after atleast four years on regular basis. This practices should be done after the local people and the police informed.
As a recommendation the situation in these rural set up can change to normal if the these people get assistance to make use of there natural resources sparingly.For instance in some districts like Hurungwe and Makoni the international donor GOAL Zimbabwe helped peasant farmers to make nutritional garderns and conservation farming.
Nutritional garden is a good way of subsiding farmers to use their land to grow vegetables for their family consumption and surplus for sale.
Whereas in conservation farming the idea is to plant crops such as maize ,beans and other crops without much disturbance of soil structure.The farmer only mark the rows and plant the seeds without tilling the whole field.The system is successfull in districts like Zvimba, Hurungwe and Makoni.During the years when rainfall is scarce the minimum tillage make farmers to produce .During the high rainfall farmer can not lose lot of soil through erosion to silt their rivers and streams.
The rampant burning of grassland can only stop after all the villagers understand that this is a social problem which needs a collective address.Through the awareness programmes rural people can be engaged to plant trees, practice conservation farming and control veld fires.
Through adopting this practice the rural folk can rest whilst their environment is friendly and their granaries full of food.
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