“If you strike a woman, you strike a rock,” is the perfect adage to describe the courage, strength and resilience of women faced with the destructive impact of the Covid 19 pandemic and life in general.

Zhombe, a rural area in the heart of the Midlands province of Zimbabwe was not spared the ravages of the coronavirus. Although statistics show that there were not as many cases of Covid in the rural parts, the restrictions that came with the virus disrupted the economy for everyone.

For 48 year old, Nyunyutai Muguti, of Sengwazi St. Pauls in Zhombe, the Covid 19 induced lockdowns disturbed her source of livelihood; selling vegetables from her garden.

“I started working on my garden in 1996 when I had my first born son Chris Richard. My husband had just lost his job and we had to find another way of earning a living for our family to survive,” she said.

She started planting and selling tomatoes and a variety of leafy vegetables. Realising that they could survive on proceeds from the garden, Nyunyutais’ husband joined his wife and the project grew. Through the proceeds from the garden they were able to send their now 5 children to school and provide for every other need.

As the years progressed they managed to save some money and started a poultry project, which improved their standard of living tremendously. “Our biggest accomplishment is that through this venture, we managed to send our first born son to University,” she said.

As the years went by and with the change in climate conditions they didn’t get as much from the garden as before. They diversified and started buying and selling fish to supplement their income. To add to this Nyunyutai was able to buy 25 goats that she’s breeding with the hopes of saving money to expand the gardening project.

But their hopes were dashed with the coming in of the Covid 19 pandemic. Their income was severely affected.

“When news of Covid 19 initially broke we were scared because we didn’t know much about the virus. There was a lot of speculation as to what it was, how one contracted it and what to do if one got infected with the virus. So for a time we were plagued with fear,” she said.

Nyunyutai said that rumours circulating were that once one family member caught it, it meant that automatically the whole family would die. That those living in town were the ones who were spreading it so they avoided anyone from the big cities. Rumour also had it that as people staying in the rural areas they were safe because of the organic foods they ate compared to city folk who ate genetically modified foods. There were also reports that some people were being vaccinated and this would increase the spread of the virus. Others said there were beverages being sold that contained the virus. All this talk amplified their anxiety added to it were the government induced lockdowns which disturbed their work.

“There were restrictions on movement and I could no longer go around selling my vegies as I did before. In addition people did not have as much disposable income as they previously did. They were stuck at home and had more time to do their own gardens and everyone’s intention was on spending less,” she said.

But through hard work and perseverance Nyunyutai and her family survived the trying times. The garden supplied them with every dietary requirement they needed. They had enough left over to assist others in need and dried some vegetables which they sold when restrictions were lifted.

“Unfortunately we were not able to save enough money to develop our garden in terms of buying a solar pump or put in place an irrigation system. This will help us especially with the erratic rainfall patterns we are currently experiencing. It’s my desire to also put a fence around my garden to deter animals that sometimes destroy all my hard work,” she said.