When I was in the village and hearing about growing mushroom, everybody in my village, including myself,

we thought that there was some kind of magic,

some kind of witchcraft.

They come in all colors of rainbow

when you look at the colors of the fruiting bodies from

a teeny tiny small ones which are purplies to really really large ones a reddish in

color or yellow fascinating looking something like you are like,

wow, can this really exist?

What is this?

My name is Chido Guevara.

I'm 34 years old.

I am a farmer, a teacher and a campaigner from Zimbabwe.

This is a story about mushrooms.

It's also my story.

I grew up in a village in Marangay near the Chiazwa diamond fields there.

I was living with my grandmother. She had two round hearts,

and when my mother passed away when I was seven, I became the head of the household.

My mother passed away from as it was very early on and there was no access to medication yet.

It was I think still a taboo to talk about HIV and AIDS back in the day. People would rather refer to witchcraft

and cancer or other things than to actually mention HIV and AIDS. I was responsible for doing everything

that the adult of a household is supposed to do, putting food on the table because my grandmother was

much older she was over a hundred years old and I was also responsible for

...