Dzokerayi Mu is a local Davis resident who wears a multitude of hats in our community. In conjunction with raising three beautiful kids, she has run a nonprofit organization called Tese Foundation for the last 7 years. Dzokerayi is also a part of Yolo Committee for Diverse and Inclusive Elections. Just recently, she has created a group called WiLD Events that supports women in leadership positions.She and her husband are food entrepreneurs as well and started Zim Cuisine to showcase Zimbabwean culture and cuisine in our town. Zim Cuisine does catering, food pop-ups, and has recently started at the Davis Farmers’ Market. Catch them at the farmers’ market and try a taste of Zimbabwe every second Wednesday of the month! (Next events will be August 12th and August 26th)
****** For the Davis Farmers Market event on August 12th, Zim Cuisine is donating 100% of the profits raised from the event to rebuilding the home of one of Tese Foundation’s students and her grandmother who lost their home due to heavy rains and have been homeless since February. They are $5000 away to reaching the goal of rebuilding their home. ******
We recently shared a truly eye-opening conversation in which we discussed the intersections between food, diversity, culture, racial justice, and entrepreneurship.
Read more below to see Dzokerayi’s illuminating insights and get a taste of the passion she has for creating and sharing delicious food!
HOW HAS THE PANDEMIC BEEN AFFECTING ZIM CUISINE’S OPERATIONS?
If we’re gonna be specific in Davis, a lot of the food businesses in Davis have been suffering before the pandemic. Rents downtown are high, and there’s just not a lot of diverse food there. Recently the city of Davis had the initiative to bail out downtown businesses, but you had to be registered as a downtown business. While that helped many businesses, it didn’t include us. We were not able to get any of the benefits because we’re a micro-business and we didn’t get the PPP loan either. We’ve struggled with trying to set up, getting out there, and getting ready for the farmers’ market. We need a ton of equipment and so it has been a challenge. And even now when we’re in the farmers market, we are relying on our followers to come out and buy our food. The truth of the matter is that the farmers market is very slow right now. So basically the only way that we can survive and continue to do this is if people support Zim Cuisine with our GoFundMe so that we can subsidize our costs with all the donations people are giving us.
DO YOU HAVE ANY ADVICE FOR THOSE STARTING THEIR OWN FOOD BUSINESS OR ORGANIZATION?
My advice is to just go for it, whatever season of life you may be in. For us, we are branching out during the most risky time in history. Sometimes it’s kind of overwhelming to think if it’s going to be okay, but if you don’t take any risks, you would never know. So it’s better to try and fail than to never try at all. If you have an idea and look for a mentor or support group, just go for it, start small and increase it as you go.
WHAT HAS BEEN THE MOST REWARDING PART IN STARTING ZIM CUISINE?
My favorite part is the kids. A lot of families have very picky kids and consistently, our biggest fan base is the young kids that their parents swore don’t eat curry, spices, beans, or mushrooms. And we make them believers! We have quite a following with the young kids, and that is just a testimony to how wholesome our food is. Slow-cooked foods are the best kinds of food, and it’s the food that you prepare yourself with fresh vegetables and is cooked in a loving environment. So for me, the most rewarding part is just really seeing the children enjoy our food.
WHAT DO YOU LIKE BEST ABOUT WORKING IN DAVIS?
We have been really well-supported in Davis since we’ve started, and we’ve seen that people want us to be here and are creating space for us and opportunities for us. It’s really humbling because the first day we were at Davis Farmers Market, we were overwhelmed with business and that is a good problem to have. We just really want that to be consistent and to continue to be overwhelmed with business so that we can stay open. We’ve been in Davis for 11 years now, and we’ve definitely seen Davis become a little more diverse. We still do have issues with diversity since it’s getting harder to live here as systemic oppression financially and economically causes people not to be able to live here. It was really difficult being the only black family we could see for miles while taking a walk and doing everyday things. Over the years I did see the number of those increase, but more so now than ever, we see somewhat of a slight decrease because families of color cannot afford to live here.
HOW HAVE YOU SEEN THE DAVIS COMMUNITY STAND IN SOLIDARITY FOR BLM?
The Davis community has been overwhelming in terms of supporting. In fact, I’ve lived in Missouri, Portland, Washington, and even in New York; and in all these cities that I’ve lived I have not met as many allies as I have in Davis. There’s definitely people that understand when I say ‘white privilege’ and aren’t super mad, in fact they use it themselves. This is the place to start a revolution and make a change for good. We had a march and protest that I planned a couple months ago, called “For our Fathers, For our Brothers, For our Sons”, and we saw almost a 1,000 people show up in our small town. We definitely see white allies have more of a role than ever before and in Davis, they’re really activating it and playing a role.
WHAT DO YOU THINK NEEDS TO BE DONE IN DAVIS RIGHT NOW TO HELP WITH BLM?
This is not the time to be silent. You can’t just say, "I’m not racist”, you have to hate racism. What needs to be done in Davis is that white parents need to have that talk with their kids. I have three kids, all different ages and all different personalities, and they have all experienced racism in their classrooms. Parents need to have the talk with their kids about race from ages 3, and every couple of months reminding their kids about skin color, about what white privilege is, what we can do in this situation, and engaging their kids. If we’re going to change things, more conversations have to happen in the home.I also think more than ever, people need to be in community with those that don’t look like them. In our city, we see people of different colors and races, but we don’t see much interaction. You need to normalize people by having relationships. As long as someone has never had me inside their home, it’s easy for them to separate issues of me or my children. So now, more than ever, invite families of color to your birthday, to barbecue, to go on vacation. Many times we have seen things on the outside, been friendly enough that we say hi and chat, but not enough to have deeper relationships that make us accountable to each other. And I would say the same for many races. If you look at your friend groups, look at how many people of different races you interact with and actively pursue relationships with the many different races. It’s not enough to have a token black friend, you have to have multiple black friends to understand the struggle. We as a society need to integrate socially and then have those conversations with our kids.
WHAT IS YOUR INSPIRATION FOR ZIM CUISINE?
Our inspiration is African food. I was born in Zimbabwe and I’ve been in the US all of my adult life. And I’ve noticed that when people think of African food, they think of Ethiopian. There’s a lot of Ethiopian immigrants in the US, and so the only food, if you ever were exposed to African food, would be Ethiopian. I have tried to explain to everyone in my life that Africa is not a country, it is a continent with different countries, different cultures, and different foods. I just wanted to bring that into the mix and have people taste a different region of African food.
WHAT ARE THE DISHES YOU CREATE FOR ZIM CUISINE?
We have a lot of things and we can’t serve them all on one day, so our goal at the farmers market is just to introduce people to our food and rotate it weekly. It will also help people come back, so if they know that the next time we have a different dish they might be inspired to try it and come back. We always serve our meats with vegetables and starch. For vegetarians, we serve it as vegetables and a starch.
So generally, African food has something to do with braai. Braai is barbecue, but when someone says that, they’re usually thinking about hot dogs and burgers. With African braai, they’re basically putting a whole cow on the grill, steaks, pork chops, and Boerewors (traditional African sausage). While it’s heavy barbecue, it’s also heavy vegetables.
At Zim Cuisine, almost every vegetable dish of ours is vegan and gluten-free. We have coconut green beans, which is sauteed green beans with black pepper and fresh coconut shavings. Then we also have sauteed veggies, which is sauteed kale and cabbage. It’s very simple but it’s always a crowd favorite. I have always thought of it as a simple base of our meal but I’ve had an international chef tell me that it’s their favorite dish. People look at peanut butter here and see it as a dessert, but it’s a savory dish for us and we put mustard greens in our peanut butter sauce and we simmer it for hours.
As for starches, we have jasmine rice and sadza. Jasmine rice is pretty fluffy and yummy on its own. Sadza is simple and made of just two ingredients: water and cornmeal, but the way you cook it is very hard. In our African traditional culture, when somebody is about to get married, they test them with a big pot and ask them how well they can make their sadza as a rite of passage. It’s gluten-free and almost bland on its own, but you use it to dip into all these foods that we make.
We do appetizers as well! We have sausage rolls, beef and veggie samosas, and meat and vegetarian pies. Zimbabwe was a British colony, so we have a lot of British food crossover. Our sausage rolls are basically ground sausage, spices, and stuffed pastry-- you can’t go wrong with that. Our samosas are different from Indian samosas as the pastry and flavors are a bit different. Our pies are similar to pot pies but more dense and handheld that you can grab and eat on the go.
WHAT’S THE PLAN FOR ZIM CUISINE IN THE FUTURE?
Our goal is not to be in the farmers’ market for the long term. Our goal is to have a restaurant where we can interact with our customers and have a cultural experience. We can only do that if people want us here and raise their concerns to say how do we make this happen, how do we bring this business in, and how do we help them survive. I encourage people to eat in Davis, and while a lot of us try to go to Sacramento to eat diverse foods, the more people mention the need for diverse food in Davis, the more opportunities that businesses like ours have for spaces.
WHAT CAN WE DO TO HELP ZIM CUISINE?
If people can constantly come out and support us and make Zim Cuisine a part of their dinner plans every other week and commit to buying a plate from us, that would really help us survive. We also would really appreciate help with our GoFundMe. Our initial funds were all just spent on equipment and we didn’t even get all the equipment we needed. We need to subsidize the costs of just being able to offer our food at the farmers’ market. In the future, we’re looking for a space to grow as well as looking for investors who believe in what we’re doing to help us open a business in Davis. Some things people can do is just share about our food and our calendar, follow and like our Facebook and Instagram. We also have a website where you can look at options into catering for small gatherings and parties.
HOW IS IT JUGGLING ALL THESE PROJECTS AND RAISING 3 KIDS OF YOUR OWN AS WELL?
Very busy, but they help in every which way they can. The eldest one has more of a responsibility. If you come up to the farmer’s market you can see him taking orders and really participating and helping with bookkeeping. We don’t think there’s really an age to start learning about bookkeeping. Since we’re first generation business owners, we were never really taught these things at a young age. But at 11, if he already knows how to keep his books, you can imagine how much better of a bookkeeper and business owner he would be. Those are the skills we’re trying to impart on our kids, whichever fields they choose to be, but we think experience is experience and there’s never too much experience in life.
MORE INFORMATION ON THE PROGRAMS IN DAVIS THAT DZOKERAYI ADVOCATES FOR:
Tese Foundation is a non-profit organization that Dzokerayi founded. Tese sponsors children, mostly girls, in Zimbabwe to go to school and help with education packages. At the moment, they are trying to rebuild one of the girl’s home because they had their home washed away in February rains. Their whole family has been homeless throughout COVID-19, so it is urgent to help rebuild their home. If anybody is interested, please follow the Tese Foundation page!
Just recently Dzokerayi is part of creating a support group called WiLD Events in Davis. As they realized that there is not an institution to support women in our community that would involve anything in leadership. This is a support base for anyone that identifies as female and is needing support in any area. They planned the march, “For our Fathers, For our Brothers, For our Sons” in June. On August 9th, they will be having a march, “For our Mothers, For our Sisters, For our Daughters”. Visit their Facebook page for further information!
She is also a part of the Yolo Committee for Diverse and Inclusive Elections. Recently, the school board made a decision that they felt was made without really listening to the public or taking in consideration our experience. So this committee is in conjunction with WiLD to make sure that people that are elected into power are concerned about issues of diversity and inclusion. They want to support any candidate that represents and has a track record of caring for minorities in any issues of inclusion and diversity. Visit their Facebook page if you are interested in learning more!
