Hello, this is The Art of the MOOC, and we're here with Chido Govera. Thanks so much, Chido, for joining us. You're in Zimbabwe, currently, where you've worked for many years now and you travel a lot, too. But I am particularly excited about your contribution to this MOOC because we are trying to mix art, cultural practice, with also things that have been excluded from art historical canons, like farming, right, nourishment, food. And in your practice, this type of cultivation and farming is part of a much broader picture, right, of social transformation, of politics. And so thanks so much for joining us. You've been dedicating a good part of your life, perhaps most of it, to this idea of the science and art of mushroom cultivation. Can you tell us a little bit about how that started? >> Actually, so hello [LAUGH]. >> Hi. >> My journey of the art of cultivating mushrooms is starting as a young girl for 11-years-old because I had to learn to survive. And all the other things that were within my reach were heavy duties, like digging the garden and trying to farm, using the traditional farming methods. And after trying so many times and failing, as a young girl you don't know anything about farming. From when I was around 7-years-old, I had to do that and failing all the way. And then, of course, when I was 11, I learned about mushrooms. And for me that was really a turning point, where I was realizing that you can convert waste into something meaningful, something of high value. And this is not something that I could have learned if I had continued with the traditional farming practices. And so, yeah, it starts from a young girl who wants to survive, discovering something new, and then asking the question to say, hey, what more can come out of this? That's how it started. Well, [LAUGH] so we were just transported from the village into the university. And we went there and we were told, first of all, about cultivating mushrooms, which were something very, very new. We'd never heard about it, and the only experience that I had was harvesting mushrooms in the forest with my grandmother. And what was so special about the week is that we were not just sitting there being told about growing mushrooms. We saw the process and we touched the material used to grow the mushrooms. We worked with the mushroom seed. And this is one of the things that made it so, so easy because it was a translation from the hands into your head because you touched it, you felt it, you smelled it and you could easily, then, understand it. And as a result, I have really been working on how can I make my mushroom teaching very, very practical to make the connection much easier. The connection with the material, the connection with the process, or just the connection with the food that comes in the end. And, actually, this would be interesting to do because just sitting here, I could have a group of people gathering waste material if they drink coffee or whatever. We could do that very, very easy. It's not rocket science, it's easy [LAUGH]. >> Yeah. >> [LAUGH] Actually, when I was 11-years-old and I was learning about converting waste into food, my biggest excitement was I would like to see how I can translate that into making young children, girls especially, who were growing up in a situation like mine, and they think they can amount to nothing. Just like we are converting waste into a value food, very nutritious, very healthy, I wanted to bring that message across, and also to simplify the art of cultivating mushrooms so that everyone can have access to it. And so I did that, I worked to try and say how do I make it less complicated? And from my understanding that mushroom production is coming, I mean mushrooms are growing out in nature, where there's not the slightest sterile conditions. And so I set out learning from the experience that I had with my grandmother as a little girl. And then what I was seeing in a laboratory and in the mushroom production unit, and I was bringing that together. But one of the things that I was doing in this process is when I was going away to teach people about mushroom production, I was also learning what the challenges were. And for those who were in the same circumstances as me, what was their challenges, and those who were trying to do the same work that I was doing, what were the challenges? And what I saw is that we have a big amount of people, or organizations, that are trying to make changes for disadvantaged populations. And they try to achieve it through training and, yes there's been cultivation of tomatoes, and there's been a lot of things, but there was one important thing which was missing. And this was the aspect of following up and really, again, teaching in a way that you touch, you feel, and you experience and you try then to understand. But also that everything is customized to suit the local conditions. That was missing. And when I was 19, I had written a biography of myself as a way of healing from all the traumas of my childhood. And I was looking back at all this to say what I went though as a little girl, what I am experiencing in my journey of trying to help other people, the challenges that they are facing, and I ask myself, what should I do about this? Do I sit down and try to write and explain this, or do I make this into a practical demonstration of what is the future of hope because my biography was titled, The Future of Hope. And for me it was it was a big question, and in the end I was deciding I am not going to write and explain what I think is the future of hope. Instead of that, I'm going to make the foundation and make a center where I can demonstrate how I see this working. And this is actually how the Future of Hope was coming up. So with a group of friends, we came together and we started building this up. And in 2013, we became officially registered and started our training. And until now, we have more than 13 communities that we trained. And we're implementing projects now in the different communities, and we're learning a lot in that process. We're seeing more and more how we all need to work together to make the changes that we need to make, to make the advances that we need to see in this area, where the poor people are getting help, but they are remaining poor. Or they don't find the connection from the resources that are brought in as help, they don't find the connection that makes sustainability. And so that's what we're trying to figure out.
