Just Do It

Dennis Mashindi ('21)

My summers have never been comparable to most. I have traveled time and time again to a continent only familiar to most thanks to a popular Disney film. Zimbabwe has been my summer destination for the last five summers, as I helped my father see his dreams come to fruition. My father started an organization in 2010, with the hopes of being able to build hospitals, clinics, churches, and schools to revive his village and ancestral home. I took it upon myself to travel to Zimbabwe alone this summer because I wanted to discover what it was that my heart desired. For years I had witnessed my father revolutionize the way the system worked. What he saw unfit, he set out to change. The system has been one that has disadvantaged the common man who didn’t find himself amongst the company of elites. The system asked those to climb a ladder with missing rungs. I set to explore this land that my father loves and personally experience the kinks in this system. With a minivan and some money, I saw Zimbabwe for what it really is. 

Earlier this year, I was put in contact with two students who currently attend Macalester College who were both wanting to collaborate on a sustainability minded project. Likhwa Ndlovu (Zimbabwean) and Mphatso Simbao (Zambian) wanted to do a project to make sure that our respective countries could find an economic way to get ahead of the pack environmentally. I was looking to create my own agricultural based project but this opportunity gave me a chance to collaborate with some of Africa’s gifted individuals. As I see it, the main problem with the African continent is when people leave their contributions back home are done so via monetary support to their families. Though helpful to an extent, money sent through “aid” is used and never recycled. Building institutions and teaching people how to provide for themselves proves to be more effective in our communities in Africa.. Likhwa, Mphatso, and myself saw that it was important was for us to help those back home through our research that would give our people many opportunities to learn how to provide for themselves. 

Our research was focused on green energy and agriculture. We wanted to see how bio-digesters would fair in rural and suburban environments because they had never been tested. While there, we started researching hydroponics, or a system of agriculture where seeds are grown in water and a growth medium instead of the conventional soil methods. Upon hearing that many children were dying from the harmful products, we did research on the comparisons to biopesticides in relation to chemically harmful pesticides . We wanted to investigate how we could make farming soil nutrient rich using fish waste by way of bucket fish farming. Lastly, we wanted to teach people to our methods so that when we leave, they will be able to provide for themselves.

So we each flew back to the continent. With blueprints, data, and heads full of ideas, we travelled back with a lot to accomplish. In our two months, we lived life without limits and did things no one in our regions had ever done before. 

Back at home, we had partnered our research with the largest tobacco seedling plant on the continent, established a fully operational hydroponic system on our first commercial farm(Zimbabwe), dug our first communal pond for irrigation and water storage(Zambia), designed our first biopesticides(Zambia), built our first commercial demonstration bio digester(Zimbabwe), and taught countless seminars on agriculture and sustainable energy and started numerous fish and worm farms(Zimbabwe and Zambia). Within the next year, we hope to have designed a more efficient hydroponic system for 10 new farms in 2019, expand our biopesticides and bio digesters to 2500 more farming households by September 2020, build 30 worm and fish farms by February 2019 and see my father’s hospital be the first hospital in Zimbabwe using all green technologies based off our designs. 

When I first started working on this project, my objective was to create a green revolution on the sub-Saharan region of Africa starting with Zimbabwe. Since returning, I see that Mr. Ndlovu, Mr. Simbao and mine’s work is much bigger than that. We took this project and ran with the mentality,” If we don’t do something, then who will.” We dared to be different. My father dared to be different. Those wanting to live outside life’s constraints dare to be different. As long as I’m granted life on this Earth, I will see to it that I pen the narrative to my own story, and dare myself to do the impossible day in and day out. 

I would like to thank Likhwa Ndlovu and Mphatso Simbao for allowing me to hop on board this project. We have a long way to go but our future is bright. Many thanks to the McConnell Center and Humana for making this project and trip possible. Lastly, I would like to thank my parents, for pushing me to dream big.

For more information on our Zambian Side of the Project, visit https://two-buckets.glitch.me (computer accessible only).

Dennis Mashindi, of Lexington, Ky., is a member of the McConnell Scholar Class of 2021. He studies public health, biology, and political science at the University of Louisville.