Any doctor worth their salt will tell you that if you don’t exercise your muscles will shrink and eventually atrophy. That’s simply the risk of inactivity. So, before agreeing to recommence my weekly column I had to ask myself a simple question, "did I have it in me, was my brain atrophied”? The thing is, I couldn’t honestly answer that question without actually writing a column and getting feedback from the readers. So, after four years of inactivity, here goes.

Over the last couple of years, people would ask me, "we haven’t seen your columns in The New Times, what are you up to”? I’d answer, "I’m a farmer now”. My answer would often be met with a look of mild incredulity, a reaction that I got used to. Why? Because farmers weren’t supposed to look like me. They were supposed to be a decade or so older than me, be semi or fully retired and/or have at least a background in farming. Once they realised that I wasn’t pulling their leg, the next questions would be "how and why did you choose to do that”? "Is it profitable”? "Was it worth the time and money?”

I’d then try to give them a concise answer that was something like this; "I choose to do agriculture because I enjoy the fact that it is one of the few professions that I know where what you put in is what you get out. You couldn’t cheat the process.” At its most basic, farming is a profession that forces you to take the long view.

I’ve heard farming horror stories from lots of people. Stories of too much rain destroying crops and not enough rain doing the same. I’ve heard stories about cheating farm workers and greedy middlemen. I’ve heard stories about goods rotting in fields because of the Covid-19 lockdowns of yesteryear and I’ve heard farmers lament about expensive fertilisers and rising fuel prices. To be honest, I’ve even told those tales myself.

But what I then try to add to my horror stories, when I’m asked about my experiences over the years, is some hope. That’s where the long view comes in. I’ve come to believe that for every challenge that comes a farmer’s way is an opportunity to learn and improve.

Challenges aren’t to be run away from, they are to be embraced. Why embrace them? Because with the challenges come solutions and with solutions come results. And with results finally comes profit.

Bear this train of thought in mind as I move to the topic of this week’s column, the utter horror show that is the DRC at the moment. I’ve been following the ratcheting up of tensions over the last couple of months and I’m sure that there are a whole lot of cross border traders and government officials who wish they could magically fix the situation. Imagine if they could snap their fingers and reconcile the Rwandaphones in North and South Kivu with their government, make the FDLR lay down their arms and come home to Rwanda and give the Congolese people the kind of government they deserve? It would be great wouldn’t it?

The thing is, we don’t live in magic land. We live in the Great Lakes Region. We live in a place that’s rife with rebellions, small arms, unhelpful international players and unwise politicians who have no qualms about unleashing the dragons of genocide ideology, sectarianism and violence. It takes a herculean amount of hope to look beyond these issues and realise that there is a positive future in the cards for us as well as our children.

Yes we have rebels and politicians who sabre rattle and take us to the brink of bloody conflict. But on the other hand, we are a people who share much more in common than a mere geographical space. We share families and culture. We share hopes and aspirations. We trade with each other and share market opportunities. We enjoy envious amounts of natural resources. We have everything we need to create a future that we can be proud of. All we need to remember is that the conflicts and strife that we are going through are simply the costs that we have to pay to create that future. So let’s stay the course and remember to keep looking at the bigger picture. There will be a ‘profitable’ tomorrow for us all.

The writer is a socio-political commentator