Munda wa Chitedze Farm will never be mine

Dear Diary,

Greetings to you once more from Munda wa Chitedze Farm. Life is treating us fine here and we suffer only peacefully. I am not sure how life is in the hustle and bustle of your city from where I relocated.

Someone from your city texted me the other day that Munda wa Chitedze Farm is tautology and verbose, unnecessary repetition. They reason that munda is farm, that makes me as unknowledgeable as the one who came up with Lake Nyasa?

Why should I care a hoot? It’s their opinion anyway.

Then, this other one wonders why someone in their rightful senses can choose to cultivate chitedze, that itchy plant that punished British soldiers in one tropical African bush. But have you ever heard that crocodile farms in Salima and Mangochi export skins to Italy for expensive shoes and bags? Who would think of domesticating bees and raising Bulldogs?

As I write, words on strikes have been hitting my solar-run TV. The Judiciary called off theirs, immigration threatened to close airports and borders while health workers are going ahead with a sit-in on Monday.

Signs of the times.

You see, of late I have been engaging less of my time on these issues.

I have a strong feeling chitedze would fetch more than the K318.6 billion tobacco has raked in within seven weeks. The AHL Group and the Tobacco Commission say that is 62 percent more than the same period last year. I have no time to crosscheck what was the exchange rate then. Masamu.

While we are at it, what is this we hear that President Lazarus Chakwera has launched an Afremixbank Mangwero Industrial Park project in Lilongwe? Word has it that the Special Economic Zone will bring 15 000 jobs and K1.1 trillion will go into the economy.

Being a simple chitedze farmer, I don’t know much about these things. But high hopes came when the Maone Industrial Park was launched during the Bakili Muluzi era in Blantyre. Land alienation always wears the face of economic development.

Dear Diary, talking of economic development, some five Cabinet ministers accompanied Vice-President Saulos Chilima to the Republic of South Korea. Several agreements were signed in different sectors, including agriculture, mining, trade and digitalisation.

Trade minister, Sosten Gwengwe for one, said Korea is interested in some of our minerals that are used to produce phones and other gadgets. Samsung, the country’s tech leaders was an example.

A welcome idea, only if the deal doesn’t remind of the Kayelekera uranium and rare earths on Mulanje mountain.

Tonnes and tonnes are externalised in the name of tests and exploration.

The other day, as I lay on my humble bed I had a dream. I dreamt that I was playing bawo with one of the workers at the Munda wa Chitedze Farm.

We were using some beautiful blue stones as nkhomo. While we were playing, there came a European. He was with two locals, bawo carvers.

“Achimwene, I want to make 24 bawos so that I can teach people how to play this beautiful game. I will need these deep blue stones for nkhomo,” he said.

In my dream, my mathematics faculty was too notch. That meant 1 536 pieces!

One of the locals said: “Boss, you can even sell this farm. He will pay you richly you can buy a Chayamba Building.”

Then the skies opened from the skies. It said to me: “Mzungu has a copy of the report on geo-mapping for minerals here. It has always been under wraps.”

I was chasing the three from the farm when I woke up. Strange things, dreams.

The Munda wa Chitedze Farm is well in order.