Derbyshire

I visited a "location" called Derbyshire. Here's what it looked like.


It was a farm compound -- a village for people who worked on a chicken farm. But over the past couple of years, "war vets" have succeeded in harassing the farm's owner enough to prevent him from operating. This has been a common story in Zimbabwe over the past decade or so. The war vets (who may or may not have been involved in Zimbabwe's war for independence nearly 30 years ago) believe that the farmers or their predecessors (virtually all of whom are white) wrongly obtained the farmland during colonial times. The farmers respond that whatever injustice occurred in the past, they have proper title to their farms and cannot be removed (often forcibly) without compensation.

Whatever the merits of either side, it's obvious that people like the residents of Derbyshire -- those who depended on the farms for their livelihoods -- are part of the collateral damage.

The 30 or so families in Derbyshire now have one primary means of earning money. They drag medium-sized rocks to the village and hammer them into gravel. Here's what it looks like.
I saw many children hammering away as well, surrounded by large piles of tiny rocks. It can take two long days hammer out about 12 barrels full of gravel. The villagers then drag it to the road -- often long distances -- and sell 12 barrels for about $20.

I do not know how this farmer treated his workers, and I don't know how life was for these villagers while the farm was up and running. But this life, banging away at rocks to earn money for food, seems painfully difficult. And there are no proper outhouses or toilets; the villagers just squat behind a rock or in the bush.