LTL It's a prized ingredient, but there are also people who think truffles smell like old socks.
There's much more to mushrooms than status, though. They can be an educational tool and a ticket to independence, as Chido later learned. But at age 10, between going to school, fetching water and wood, putting food on the table and also looking after her brother and grandmother, she was struggling.
CG I was given an offer to say, ‘Look, we see that you're struggling and we think that your only way out of this situation is if you marry this person who has a blue car and has been struggling to find a wife.’
LTL This man was 40 years old and Chido was only 10. Even though the blue car was mentioned as some kind of bonus, she didn't relish the idea of being a child bride and she felt responsible for her grandmother and brother.
CG If I get married and I have to go and live with this guy, I cannot take my grandmother and my little brother with me. So I decided that I would not take the offer to marry and it was clearly communicated to me, ‘There's not much anymore that we can do for you.’
LTL Luckily, Chido was given the chance to learn about mushroom growing. As a girl who'd been denied a proper education, this was a massive opportunity for her.
CG I lived in a village called Marange. I think a lot of people that know something about Zimbabwe will know about Marange as the diamonds area, but we were really in the village. I think I saw the first hard road being built as a little girl, but before that there was nothing.
So, the university where I learnt to farm mushrooms at is Africa University, about three hours’ drive from my village where I grew up. I was very happy to go and I arrived at the university, and for me, first of all, to see that mushrooms can be cultivated was like magic. But I think what moved me the most was to see how you were able to do that from waste.
LTL As a kid who struggled to feed her family, she'd known the pain of not having enough on her plate. And growing food was hard when you had such bad soil, but mushroom growing didn't require much and it opened up so many possibilities.
CG Learning to change that waste into food was the most inspiring thing. And yes, I may have rejected the marriage that would have changed my life. But this is not the end. I am not going to fail and I am not going to waste myself. And that was really a moment in my life where I say, ‘It does not matter which path I follow; I will get where I want to be and I will bring value to myself again’.
So, we spent a week learning at the university, went back to the village. They supported us by building a mushroom house for us and giving us the early version of ready to grow kits, and we just hang them in this wooden mushroom house at Marange High School. It was about five, seven kilometres from my homestead and I would walk there every day to water the mushrooms, harvest them and bring them to the market. And I say to myself, ‘I want to make this simple so that I can teach this to other people like me who need such a skill’, to say, ‘Hey, I am not waste, I am not a failure, I can work myself out of this’. And so that's how my journey with mushrooms began.
LTL Chido eventually formed The Future of Hope Foundation, which empowers people through mushroom farming lessons around the world. Back in Australia, there are other kinds of opportunities that can sprout up with mushrooms too.
