Edson Nherera has 3 children and “one wife”. He likes to stress the “one wife” for some reason. He lives in Rutenga in the Mwenezi District of Masvingo Province. Last year, he became the top picker of mapfura fruits, which he sold to the National Biotechnology Authority’s mapfura wine factory based in Rutenga.
On 17 February 2023, Brick by Brick caught up with him in his home: “Last year, we benefited so much from the mapfura wine factory, we are happy about it. When a project comes to any place, people find it difficult to embrace it, but I now have my truck from the proceeds of last year’s pickings.
“I started by going out by myself to collect the marula fruit, but when it became big I recruited other people to collect them for me. We went to about 30-40 km from here.
“We collected trucks and trucks of the marula fruit. We then began to see that it was not only uplifting us, but also my family and the country. Indeed, a nation is built by its own people as our President has said.
“The tree was created by God. All you have to do is to park your car or cart or bring sacks and start picking the marula fruit. Other people with shallow minds look down on this. But my encouragement to them is ‘let’s just do it, we lose nothing, rather we gain a lot’.
“Many people think that going to South Africa is the only way to get rands. But my honest truth is that we are changing rand here from what we are doing for our own country Zimbabwe. We are benefitting from here without the need to leave our families to go to South Africa. So I am encouraging the youth not to sit on their hands and do nothing.
“We thank the President very much because here in Rutenga we had no industry, but now we have. So would we say the President is bad. No. He is doing good. We now have our industry here. He is good.
“Last year, I got US$3,000 for picking marula fruits for just 2 months. This year, we will give them the supplies and the money will follow.”
