When I say we ate shit, I don't mean it as a fancy metaphor. Lionel Masimba Siduna and I literally ate crappy food for a whole month — and we built something remarkable in the middle of it.
The Plan Was Perfect
Masimba would handle food, rent, internet and the frontend. I would handle the backend. He was expecting payments from clients that would cover everything until the project was complete. On paper it was entirely feasible.
Captain Cold said it best: make the plan, execute the plan, expect the plan to go off the rails, throw away the plan. The payments never came. All of them. Every single expected payment. Gone.
Shit Went South
We had no money for rent. No money for food. No consistent internet. Our diet for that month was macaroni, baked beans and soya mince. We ate soya mince so many times that Masimba — a man whose cooking abilities I would previously have ranked alongside my brother who I trust only to boil an egg — became genuinely skilled at preparing it.
We never slept on an empty stomach. But we woke up every single morning not knowing where the next meal was coming from. Masimba's only real worry during that period, he told me later, was what he had introduced me to.
Then Masimba developed a severe tooth infection. No money. No medical aid. The dentist did not fix things properly. That night I watched him furiously googling teeth anatomy at 2am trying to diagnose himself. By 4am he was on his way back to the dentist, no transport money, surviving only because a kind neighbour offered a ride.
What We Actually Built
In that month — no money, questionable food, unpaid rent, a dental crisis, daily uncertainty about eating — we completed 90 to 98 percent of Tsoka 2.0.
The platform featured activity listings, restaurants, accommodation and transport. A booking system. Heavy AJAX, jQuery and PHP combined for search and modal features that were genuinely sophisticated for what two broke final-year students were building in a holiday-empty campus.
When you love something, you are willing to go through tough situations for it. We loved the game more than our comfort. That month proved it.
Masimba and I finished that project as brothers. In the years that followed he connected me with opportunities I would not have found alone. And it was Masimba who later looked me in the eye and told me to go to Victoria Falls and sort things out with the woman I loved. I went. We sorted it out. She is now my wife. Our daughter Kehlani is here because of that conversation.
You cannot put a price on the person who eats shit with you and comes out still believing in you on the other side.