CHIDO GOVERA CULTIVATES HOPE
SUBJECT Chido Govera
OCCUPATION Mushroom farmer, campaigner
INTERVIEWER Nathan Scolaro
PHOTOGRAPHER Esquives Photography
LOCATION Harare, Zimbabwe
DATE April, 2017
ANTIDOTE TO Impossibility
UNEXPECTED Rebel grandmother
Chido Govera says she is first and foremost a farmer. But what she cultivates through farming is so much more than produce or land health. She cultivates human possibility, enabling people in disadvantaged, often trauma-filled circumstances to learn the ways of the land and make their own livelihoods from nature’s abundance.
Growing up in rural Zimbabwe, Chido was orphaned at age seven and left to care for her grandmother and younger brother. Not only did she have enormous responsibility, she also experienced the worst possible abuse by close family members. When she was 11, an opportunity to learn mushroom farming came her way and completely transformed her life. It allowed her to feed her family, help other orphans in her community, and ultimately gain agency and self-determination.
Chido now travels the world teaching people how to grow mushrooms from food waste. Her memoir, The Future of Hope, which she wrote as a way of processing her trauma in her late teens, is also the name of the foundation she set up to empower others to “step out of the victim role” and build whole lives through entrepreneurship and farming.
When we spoke in Melbourne two years ago, Chido was accompanied by two of her adopted daughters who laughed and made comments in the background, filling the room with lightness. I was overwhelmed by the reminder that opportunities build lives, and that the more doors we open for ourselves and create for others, the bigger our lives become.
“The future of hope is when we all step into some change-making role, regardless of what happened to us in the beginning, so we can process our past and learn the lessons that can move us forward.”
NATHAN SCOLARO: I love the title of your book, The Future of Hope. And from what I’ve read about you and your story, I can see that central to that future, and where your source of hope comes from, is food. So tell me about that title and how food and farming has come to be your tool for activism.
CHIDO GOVERA: So the title was actually proposed to me by my adopted father, and this was from a conference that he hosted in Hiroshima together with a survivor of Auschwitz, a woman named Ellie. I was writing a book to get over the traumas from my childhood. And when I sent him the text he happened to be talking to Ellie. And he wrote back saying, “How about using as a title of what you’re writing?” And I thought, . So I did. I was around 19 when I wrote it. I didn’t reread it until I was So I set out to make a practical demonstration of what the future of hope was for me. That’s how The Future of Hope Foundation was created actually. It went from writing my story as a way of healing and then reading the story later and thinking, And I think for me the future of hope is when we all step into some change-making role, regardless of what happened to us in the beginning, so we can process our past and learn the lessons that can move us forward.
