THERE remains beautiful places in the country, where the tenets of capitalism do not reign supreme.

The countryside still is a place of beauty and peace.

It is a place where one’s humanity is still respected, fulfilled and cherished.

In the cities, the chicken gizzards and feet we used to fall back on are now out of reach, even matemba have become a delicacy no longer affordable and a family sharing one room has become the norm.

There is life beyond capitalism, which is normal, sweet, special, where one can be at peace. 

A place where children wake up every day and look forward to so many special things. 

Where each morning they wake up and eagerly wait for their brothers at the cattle kraal with empty bottles or cups for their own share of the milk for the day, straight from the cow’s udders — warm, frothy and full of nutrition. 

Later they go home for porridge with peanut butter.

Each child needs something to look forward to, to make them feel special.

Fortunately, every child in the rural areas has so much to look forward to.

In the evenings, they sit by the fireside in the big round kitchen as mai cooks supper. 

Even the brothers come to join mai and the girls and there are so many stories to tell, to share… When is the eldest brother getting married? Is it that girl who does not want, out of respect, to sit close to us in Church, or the one who is always sent by her mother to buy chickens?

There is laughter, joy and oneness.

In the countryside, the evening goes too fast and the little ones will stay up until sleep steals them away from the family hearth. 

The family remains as one; everyone feels special, they are at peace. There might be no candles sometimes, but there is enough light from the fire, or from the phone — charged courtesy of the brothers’ engineering on the old tractor battery.

Here, you too can be at peace; you can say goodbye to the endless hours of work which no longer sustain your family. This is a place where the value of your labour never goes to waste; what you produce will always satisfy your family needs. 

There is a place outside capitalism where the value of the labour of your hands is not determined in a far off place by those who do not know what it is to labour with their hands.

This is home, where you wake up to the mooing of cows, while in the afternoon you watch the herd converge and rest in the shady trees and the goats follow suit.

There is never a dull moment. 

The moment you start cleaning the pots, the roadrunners, peacocks and guinea fowls fall over each other in the rush for the morning meal of makoko, left over sadza. 

You look at them in amazement; they are ever increasing; you easily count 150, minus the dozens of chicks! 

The maize from two harvests ago is getting bad; as you go to the old drum by the granary, the birds know the routine. There is a stampede and your feet are not spared; they are there before you, at their feeding ground, it is a maize feast.

You fill the troughs of water and there is another stampede; it is always the same; the birds never learn. There is always enough water, soon they will all be done but the stampede will have muddied the water; you shake your head, always the same, and you leave.

This is a place called home, outside the capitalist world, where children never have to worry about what to eat. This morning they just finished shelling a big bag of maize and the brothers will take it to the grinding mill in the scotch-cart. 

They asked for a bonus and mai gave them a small basket of maize grain and a plateful of ground nuts to boil with the maize. 

They make a fire outside by the shed and put the oldest pot on the fire. 

It is very hot but the children are not worried; mai has a huge clay pot of maheu, it never runs out. 

Before sunset they have to go to the garden to water the vegetables and they will bring home some water from the well.

The whole week the children have been asking mai if they can dig up sweet potatoes, but permission is yet to come. There is a huge sweet potato patch behind the kitchen, they look forward to munching something special.

Whenever they get permission to accompany their brothers to the pastures or to bring them food, it is always an adventure, the land of fruits has endless bounty; chakata, mambwide, nzviru, matamba, matohwe, zvirara, hute, sosoti … every season there is something special in the bushes.

Mai’s old friend, the one who makes clay pots for her, came by yesterday. Mai paid her with a bucket of unshelled groundnuts for the big beer pot, the one we have been storing water in; it makes the water tastier and cooler than the plastic buckets.

She told mai she has gorosi (wheat), if she wanted some; a bucket perhaps! The brothers could plough for her as payment when the rains came. 

Mai called in the brothers and they discussed the issue. The brothers asked for the hectarage involved and they settled for two buckets of wheat. 

Mai’s friend was happy, that was a major headache cleared. 

The brothers would collect the wheat on their way from the dip-tank.

The children are the happiest; mai would now make the ancient wheat bread which tastes the best in the oven baba built for her outside the kitchen.

Saturday is the big adventure day! The big sisters do not go to school, so we all go to look for firewood, up the hills and in the forests, it is also when we do our laundry at the dam, where we also swim. 

In the evening we go home.

In the countryside, there is a life which is normal, which is meaningful, which trusts that Musikavanhu knew what he was doing when he created the earth and all its endowments, this life is outside capitalism.

A place where there is dignity and pride in who you are, where the law of the land applies;each one shall have land to till, no one shall be denied food, a place governed by laws which are the anti-thesis of capitalism which thrives on destitution.

Musikavanhu is not a capitalist, He never created a capitalist world, so there must be life outside capitalism; life which defends the inherent dignity He put in each man.