Dande

Dande is a rural remote area situated in Mbire district in the northern part of Zimbabwe, west of Muzarabani and Mt Darwin districts within Zambezi valley. The central area being Mushumbi Pools Business centre (Mushumbi growth point), north of Guruve in Mashonaland Province. Mushumbi Pools is about 251kms from Harare and 111kms going further is Kanyemba Border Post, a small town which borders Zimbabwe, Zambia and Mozambique. The area is characterised by erratic rainfall and frequent droughts, making the capacity for coping with temporal water shortages essential for smallholder farmers. The Dande is a vast and wild landscape of more than 500,000 acres and is home to around 87,000 people in over 100 scattered small villages and homesteads. Most of these villages are located along the Panhame (Dande), Hunyani and Angwa rivers as this was their source of water and along road networks. Most of the population have to travel over 20kms to access healthcare centers and children also travel 15kms or more to reach schools with only 5 secondary schools. Droughts and limited skills and resources meant the population struggles to grow enough food for themselves and also the area is tsetse infested area exposed much to malaria and water-born diseases.

Small-scale rain-fed agriculture is the main livelihood source in the Zambezi valley area. The yield levels are very low especially during years of severe drought and in some cases a little surplus is realised which is then saved for other household needs. In response to the low yields, smallholder farmers diversify their sources of income. The diversification is also a way to accumulate wealth. However, the security of the livelihoods of smallholder farmers in this environment remains closely linked with the productivity levels of the local agro-ecological zones, which are hindered to a large extent by water availability. These areas are characterised by high atmospheric evaporation and highly variable spatial and temporal precipitation that makes rain-fed farming a risk economic activity.

The missionary team that is going in Dande is led by Pastor Innocent Dzavo who is currently sacrificing travelling from Harare. The work is promising since the Brother started going for the missionary work in Dande has been able to set a few small churches in Mushumbi and the surrounding places such as Nyambudzi, Chitsungo, Majongwe, Kanongo, Neshangwe and Sangojena. Some of the places are not reachable by foot unless to the native people of Dande who are used to walking long distances. In an effort to further this work CREN has sent 6 bicycles to assist the team with
speeding up the mobility as they run with the gospel in these villages. In addition CREN helped the brothers in Dande to set up 4 seed libraries (each consisting of 200+ spoken word books), Agapao tablet for the Pastor, outreach tracts circa 2000+ copies, outreach banners and business cards and ad hoc transport support. All the materials have been sent on Friday 02 April 2021 to Pastor Dzavo by the CREN rep in Harare. CREN is also
hoping to help the team with mobile phones for the outreach preachers that are working with Pastor Dzavo for communication and a complete message SD card to equip them with the Message. The bicycles will assist these foot soldiers to reach further away from the main road network and ease their mobility.

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