This past week has been a busy one. I came back from Penhalonga on Tuesday and started a conference on Wednesday. The conference was put on by an organization called Foundations for Farming. You must be thinking, Meredith didn’t go to Zimbabwe to be a farmer and you’re right, I didn’t I don’t have the gift of gardening and it’s not an interest for me. This conference was how to feed Zimbabwe. A country with 32% of the world’s resources and contributes 1.3%. It was more how to motivate and change the minds on how they farm. This technique for farming goes back to the basics before tractors and fertilizer and pesticides. It goes back to nature. In the bush trees, berries, fungus grow without man made inventions and in a country that can’t afford to buy, fix or maintain these inventions going back to basics seems like the right thing to do. The buildings I will be constructing will be all natural and follow an environmental approach it seemed smart to find out away to motivate the country to adopt this process. To help the country use it’s own resources and instead of destroying the land, help rebuild it. The conference was good and now the key is to see if it catches and do people motivate others and follow through. Saturday in the wee hours of the morning, I packed up my car and drove to Nyanga where I am now living. I spent the day unpacking and settling into my new home. Nyanga is a rural community that is surrounded by mountains and green space unlike Harare that is surrounded by buildings and people. As I drove into town I saw a herd of Zebra and Wildebeests. It was quite surreal since in Canada we see these animals in a zoo, not in the wild. I had to stop on the highway to let monkeys cross, not the moose or bear we see at home. So now the real work begins, I’ll be spending the next few weeks in the “lab” testing different mixtures for brick to see what the best compound is. So wish me luck.