Sometimes in farming, you do things right. You wait for the rains. You till the soil. You buy good seeds, not the cheap ones from the bus stand. You dig the holes, just enough depth. Use quality manure. You drop two seeds per hole; just like they taught you. Just like your father did. Just like generations have done.

And then… you wait. Days pass. The sun rises. The clouds gather. The smell of soil shifts. Life begins.

One seed grows. Stretches. Reaches. The other doesn’t. Maybe it rotted. Maybe it was too slow. Maybe it just couldn’t make it.

Sometimes both grow—and even then, you still pull one out. Not because it was bad. Not because it didn’t try. But because there’s only room for one to thrive. And the field must continue. That’s the rule of the shamba.

Maybe life is like that.

You can do everything right, show up early, work hard, love deeply, believe strongly, and still not see the harvest you hoped for. You might still lose. You might be the seed that didn’t rise. Or worse, the one that rose, only to be pulled out later… because the system only has space for one.

And in those moments, it’s okay to cry. It’s okay to sit down in the furrow of your own sadness and just feel it. You were a good seed. You tried. That matters.

But maybe the story doesn’t end there. Maybe, even when a seed doesn’t grow, it feeds the soil. Maybe it gives nutrients to the one that remains.
Maybe it softens the earth for future roots. Maybe its death was not a waste, but a gift, unseen, quiet, but real.

So yes, sometimes we lose. Not because we’re wrong. Not because we’re weak. But because that’s just how the shamba works. And in losing, we still belong to the land. We still matter. We still serve.

And when the next season comes, because it always does, maybe we rise again, in another form. In another row. In another field. Or maybe not.

But either way, the shamba remembers.