My name is Shylet Nkomo. I am a single mother aged 30 with four children from Lupane Mzola. As we know, in most parts of Zimbabwe, we practice rain-fed agriculture, and without rain, we are likely to starve. My husband abandoned me while I was pregnant with my last born, and from that time, we never heard from him. Life has been very tough for me and my kids. For the past three years, I have been trying to feed my kids and pay for their school fees, but I am not managing the situation due to changes in weather patterns. It’s so unfortunate that for the past 2 years, we have received little rainfall that cannot sustain us and our livestock. Last year, 2022, we received too much rain in December and January. I managed to sow crop-resistant crops like sorghum and millet; unfortunately, there was no rainfall in February. My yields were scorched by the sun and withered.
We are currently in the harvest time when we have nothing to harvest as our crops were withered. I don’t have food in my house. I am starving with my four kids. My kids have dropped out because I cannot afford to pay their fees. We lost our crops and have nothing in our storage, which I would sometimes sell to GMB for my kids’ school fees. January disease killed our small goats and the two cows my husband left behind. Life is becoming more complex daily because my two older sons and I have to work in other people’s homes for a plate or a gallon of mealie-meal from those whose husbands are working in SA.
They send 50kgs of mealie-meal occasionally, so we do not sleep on an empty stomach. It’s so painful to have a three-year-old baby with nothing to eat. Changes in weather patterns have greatly affected me because I depended on farming only. Sometimes, we sleep on an empty stomach. Even if the lean season comes, we won’t have the energy to go to the field and plough. We have nothing to eat.