Wednesday, January 30, 2008
blood on the floor
These days, you're most likely to see Zimbabwe's state-controlled Herald newspaper soaked in blood.
Like most electrical appliances in Zimbabwe, my 'fridge is an old one. The white's peeling off the inside, the handle is half-eaten away and there are streaks of blue paint left from when I unwisely let my toddler use the door as a lovely long platform for his creativity. Worse still, the seal has gone, which means the freezer compartment freezes into a solid ice drift with remarkable rapidity. Every other day I take a hammer and bash away at the ice to make a space to store my milk packets (milk comes in sealed plastic bags, like giant tea-bags in Zimbabwe, if it comes at all). Banging is bad for my freezer (and yes Dad, it's bad for my sanctification) but there's not much else I can do. At least I still have power to make ice for good chunks of time.
Blackouts are lethal if you have meat in your deep freeze. The meat goes off, just like the power. So we line the bottom of our 'fridges with newspaper to soak up the water and the chicken blood. There are no private dailies here anymore -- the Media and Information Commission still hasn't decided whether to re-licence the wildly-popular Daily News, nearly four years after it was closed down by armed police -- so what do we use? The Herald of Total Honesty, of course. Problem is: there's a Herald shortage. Price controls mean the printers can only buy 14 tonnes of paper a week when they need 100 tonnes, reports said today. Hey presto: a thriving black market for the pro-government press. In Harare you can waste precious fuel driving from robot to robot (Zimbabweans copy South Africans and call traffic lights robots), looking for a copy. If you're lucky a black-market dealer/doormat-made-out-of-strips-of-old-tyre vendor might offer you one, at, say, 2 million Zimbabwe dollars a copy instead of 900,000. Snap it up.
We need the Herald badly. We need it to know what They are saying, we need it for loo roll (1 roll very thin greyish, disintegrating 1-ply = 3 million Zimbabwe dollars this week, ie three and a third Heralds. The other local loo-roll alternatives are gnawed mealie-cobs and -- this one's for deep in the bush -- large stones).
And we need it to mop up the blood in our 'fridges.
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
sadza stories
I'd never had sadza before I came here. It's the staple food for Zimbabweans, made with mealie-meal (maize-meal). The maize is ground down into a white powder of a consistency somewhere between sand and Johnson's Baby Powder, if you get the top brand.
Sadza comes in different forms: bota, which is the watery porridge-form we eat most days for breakfast, power permitting. Then there's full-on sadza, a stiff white paste you're supposed to eat in pinchfuls, a wodge of sadza squeezed between the first three fingers of your right hand. Sadza tastes best with a vegetable relish made of tomatoes, onions, "leaves" (rape or spinach), salt and peanut butter, or with meat. These days in Zimbabwe though, peanut butter's a scarce luxury and price controls mean there's precious little meat. So it's sadza wejongwe (sadza with salt water) for afternoon tea and sadza nemajuru (sadza and dried termites) for supper. That's what the weekly Manica Post said on Friday in a front-page story. And that's a government paper.
I'm fascinated by the stories about sadza, how traditionally Zimbabwean girls were taught to grind it, how good Shona wives make sure there's never a pasty white lump in their husband's plate, how you can be sent back to your in-laws simply because you haven't mastered the art of sadza-making. In the past, if a man married a woman who turned out not to be a virgin -- and he wasn't the one responsible -- he could let his in-laws know by returning a plate of white sadza with a hole scooped out in the middle. The sadza said it all.
Mealie-meal's been in short supply for several weeks now, which makes tempers short. So I was elated when I got down to the grocer's shop this morning and found her workers unloading a bakkie full of white Ngwerewere super refined. A few seconds earlier there'd been no-one there -- the shop's pretty bare -- but now customers appeared from nowhere. Marii? How much?
The grocer lets her assistant Simba do the talking. His name means power, strength or authority and he's going to need every ounce of authority he's got to sell this stuff. Nine point six, he says. That's 9.6 million for just five kgs. The grocer's going to have to move this lot fast, before a gang of hungry National Price and Incomes Commission (NIPC) inspectors arrive. The gazetted price -- the one fixed by the government in September -- is just 145,000 dollars. At 9.6 million a bag, a teacher working on last month's salary would only be able to buy two and a half bags: just 12.5 kg. No wonder my teacher friend Mai Nigel told me yesterday she was "taking leave" this term. There's not much point working these days, not if your salary won't stretch to your sadza. They reckon 10 kgs will do a family a week and a half.
"Where'd you get it from?" I ask, counting out wads of blue 100,000 notes. Today I'm lucky: I have cash.
"From a new farmer," the grocer says and she looks up at me through her fringe.
New farmer is such a loaded term these days. It might mean old-style war vet, who invaded a white-owned farm, terrorised the former white owners, slashed a few cows and made off with the family silver and a few tractors. Or it might mean something different: someone a lot less violent, someone genuinely interested in a new career, someone driven to the land as a way of fending for his family in Zimbabwe's worst-ever economic crisis. This new farmer is an army brigadier's wife, says the grocer.
"Such a nice woman," she says defensively. I nod.
"Her husband's been transferred to Gweru," she says. (What, for the elections?) "I never knew an army brigadier could be so nice."
Nice is such a convenient word, despite Mrs Cuthbert's ban on it in our News books at the bottom end of primary school. "Nice means nothing, children," she said. Now sometimes that's a good thing.
Sadza comes in different forms: bota, which is the watery porridge-form we eat most days for breakfast, power permitting. Then there's full-on sadza, a stiff white paste you're supposed to eat in pinchfuls, a wodge of sadza squeezed between the first three fingers of your right hand. Sadza tastes best with a vegetable relish made of tomatoes, onions, "leaves" (rape or spinach), salt and peanut butter, or with meat. These days in Zimbabwe though, peanut butter's a scarce luxury and price controls mean there's precious little meat. So it's sadza wejongwe (sadza with salt water) for afternoon tea and sadza nemajuru (sadza and dried termites) for supper. That's what the weekly Manica Post said on Friday in a front-page story. And that's a government paper.
I'm fascinated by the stories about sadza, how traditionally Zimbabwean girls were taught to grind it, how good Shona wives make sure there's never a pasty white lump in their husband's plate, how you can be sent back to your in-laws simply because you haven't mastered the art of sadza-making. In the past, if a man married a woman who turned out not to be a virgin -- and he wasn't the one responsible -- he could let his in-laws know by returning a plate of white sadza with a hole scooped out in the middle. The sadza said it all.
Mealie-meal's been in short supply for several weeks now, which makes tempers short. So I was elated when I got down to the grocer's shop this morning and found her workers unloading a bakkie full of white Ngwerewere super refined. A few seconds earlier there'd been no-one there -- the shop's pretty bare -- but now customers appeared from nowhere. Marii? How much?
The grocer lets her assistant Simba do the talking. His name means power, strength or authority and he's going to need every ounce of authority he's got to sell this stuff. Nine point six, he says. That's 9.6 million for just five kgs. The grocer's going to have to move this lot fast, before a gang of hungry National Price and Incomes Commission (NIPC) inspectors arrive. The gazetted price -- the one fixed by the government in September -- is just 145,000 dollars. At 9.6 million a bag, a teacher working on last month's salary would only be able to buy two and a half bags: just 12.5 kg. No wonder my teacher friend Mai Nigel told me yesterday she was "taking leave" this term. There's not much point working these days, not if your salary won't stretch to your sadza. They reckon 10 kgs will do a family a week and a half.
"Where'd you get it from?" I ask, counting out wads of blue 100,000 notes. Today I'm lucky: I have cash.
"From a new farmer," the grocer says and she looks up at me through her fringe.
New farmer is such a loaded term these days. It might mean old-style war vet, who invaded a white-owned farm, terrorised the former white owners, slashed a few cows and made off with the family silver and a few tractors. Or it might mean something different: someone a lot less violent, someone genuinely interested in a new career, someone driven to the land as a way of fending for his family in Zimbabwe's worst-ever economic crisis. This new farmer is an army brigadier's wife, says the grocer.
"Such a nice woman," she says defensively. I nod.
"Her husband's been transferred to Gweru," she says. (What, for the elections?) "I never knew an army brigadier could be so nice."
Nice is such a convenient word, despite Mrs Cuthbert's ban on it in our News books at the bottom end of primary school. "Nice means nothing, children," she said. Now sometimes that's a good thing.
Monday, January 28, 2008
cats and dogs
Edith Mabel didn't like small boys much but she did like cats and dogs.
Edith Mabel took my father-in-law and his brother in when they were aged 3 and 5. Elsie, my father-in-law's real mother died of TB when she was just 23. Her husband skedaddled, terrified by the weight of two toddlers. Nothing more was heard of him for years till Edith Mabel got the news he'd died a lonely alcoholic, somewhere in South Africa. All that's left of my husband's real grandparents now is a black-and-white picture of Elsie in my father-in-law's study, perched on the curtain rail -- a wistful girl with dark wavy hair that comes to just above her jawline. Her face is turned away from the camera.
My father-in-law doesn't have happy memories of his childhood. He remembers a big house in what was then Salisbury, somewhere near today's Mount Pleasant suburb. Edith Mabel believed boys should be occupied to keep out them of trouble. They weren't allowed out of the house in the mornings for school until they'd "performed" with the help of a spoonful of cod liver oil. The boys were often late for school.
In school holidays Edith Mabel sent the brothers to ballet lessons and had them water the enormous lawn using a square grille she'd invented. The boys were each given a watering can and square grille about the size of two shoeboxes stuck together. Their job was to lay the grille on the grass and water through the holes. Then the grille had to be moved a square along, and the process repeated. Little wonder my father-in-law says he didn't start living until he met my husband's mother, a dark 17-year-old with a waist you could fit your hands round.
There were just a few light moments. One day Edith Mabel's husband (he's always nameless) brought a cat home. Edith Mabel had a big dog, a mastiff of some kind. The husband sat in a winged armed chair with a roll of newspaper and the cat on his knee. The dog was brought in, straining at the leash. He made for the cat -- and was slapped sharply on the muzzle before he could close his jaws. The process was repeated, until dog and cat eventually managed to co-exist in -- strained -- harmony (apart from when supper was served, but that's another story).
I think of Edith Mabel when we bring home two stray kittens from the SPCA. (There is still an SPCA here, with branches across the country). We have two rottweilers (not pure, and the smaller one definitely has a bit of goat in her). The rottweilers have been encouraged to chase small furry things with tantalisingly long tails that hang around in tree branches and raid my loquat/mango/granadilla crops. It occurs to me when I settle the new acquisitions in my study with a rusty old oven pan filled with leaves for a litter tray, that kittens are remarkably similar to monkeys (but they don't have blue testicles. Will the rotters ask to see their testicles before they decide whether or not to chase them? I doubt it). So we go the Edith Mabel route. My husband arms himself with a sisal branch, truncheon-size. The kittens are let onto the verandah. The dogs watch. The big one licks her lips. When either dog advances, my husband brandishes the truncheon.
Amazingly, it works. Six weeks down the line, the dogs wag their bottoms when they see the kittens. The kittens rub themselves against the dogs' paws. As long as the kittens don't climb in the loquat tree at the same time as the monkeys, they're safe. It's not quite the Garden of Eden but hey, this is Zimbabwe.
Edith Mabel took my father-in-law and his brother in when they were aged 3 and 5. Elsie, my father-in-law's real mother died of TB when she was just 23. Her husband skedaddled, terrified by the weight of two toddlers. Nothing more was heard of him for years till Edith Mabel got the news he'd died a lonely alcoholic, somewhere in South Africa. All that's left of my husband's real grandparents now is a black-and-white picture of Elsie in my father-in-law's study, perched on the curtain rail -- a wistful girl with dark wavy hair that comes to just above her jawline. Her face is turned away from the camera.
My father-in-law doesn't have happy memories of his childhood. He remembers a big house in what was then Salisbury, somewhere near today's Mount Pleasant suburb. Edith Mabel believed boys should be occupied to keep out them of trouble. They weren't allowed out of the house in the mornings for school until they'd "performed" with the help of a spoonful of cod liver oil. The boys were often late for school.
In school holidays Edith Mabel sent the brothers to ballet lessons and had them water the enormous lawn using a square grille she'd invented. The boys were each given a watering can and square grille about the size of two shoeboxes stuck together. Their job was to lay the grille on the grass and water through the holes. Then the grille had to be moved a square along, and the process repeated. Little wonder my father-in-law says he didn't start living until he met my husband's mother, a dark 17-year-old with a waist you could fit your hands round.
There were just a few light moments. One day Edith Mabel's husband (he's always nameless) brought a cat home. Edith Mabel had a big dog, a mastiff of some kind. The husband sat in a winged armed chair with a roll of newspaper and the cat on his knee. The dog was brought in, straining at the leash. He made for the cat -- and was slapped sharply on the muzzle before he could close his jaws. The process was repeated, until dog and cat eventually managed to co-exist in -- strained -- harmony (apart from when supper was served, but that's another story).
I think of Edith Mabel when we bring home two stray kittens from the SPCA. (There is still an SPCA here, with branches across the country). We have two rottweilers (not pure, and the smaller one definitely has a bit of goat in her). The rottweilers have been encouraged to chase small furry things with tantalisingly long tails that hang around in tree branches and raid my loquat/mango/granadilla crops. It occurs to me when I settle the new acquisitions in my study with a rusty old oven pan filled with leaves for a litter tray, that kittens are remarkably similar to monkeys (but they don't have blue testicles. Will the rotters ask to see their testicles before they decide whether or not to chase them? I doubt it). So we go the Edith Mabel route. My husband arms himself with a sisal branch, truncheon-size. The kittens are let onto the verandah. The dogs watch. The big one licks her lips. When either dog advances, my husband brandishes the truncheon.
Amazingly, it works. Six weeks down the line, the dogs wag their bottoms when they see the kittens. The kittens rub themselves against the dogs' paws. As long as the kittens don't climb in the loquat tree at the same time as the monkeys, they're safe. It's not quite the Garden of Eden but hey, this is Zimbabwe.
Sunday, January 20, 2008
madam & eve
A madam is not a very nice thing to be.
In Zimbabwe, The Madam is a woman -- traditionally white though these days there are black ones too -- who refers to her domestic worker as The Girl even though she's probably a grandmother. The Madam makes The Girl and The Boy (aka her gardener) a jam sandwich each mid-morning (she prides herself on having her bread sources however bad the shortages). The Madam makes the sandwiches herself: that way, she can ration the jam (which is Sun Jam, a bright-red pulp you buy in plastic tear-off sachets. The Madam wouldn't dream of eating Sun Jam herself. Sun Jam is for the povo, The Madam says. The Madam knows that povo means the masses but apart from that she speaks very little Shona. The Madam would jump at the chance of French evening classes). The Madam demands that the jam sandwiches be eaten standing up in the kitchen or, in the case of The Boy, at the kitchen door because he will make the floor muddy with his wellies (known locally as gumboots). The Madam serves her workers tea in chipped mugs she keeps specially for the purpose. The Madam likes doilies on her own tea-tray. The Madam has been known to draw a line round the inside of her sugar bowl so that she can check how fast her sugar is being swiped.
The Borrowdale Madam now, that's another story.
In Zimbabwe, The Madam is a woman -- traditionally white though these days there are black ones too -- who refers to her domestic worker as The Girl even though she's probably a grandmother. The Madam makes The Girl and The Boy (aka her gardener) a jam sandwich each mid-morning (she prides herself on having her bread sources however bad the shortages). The Madam makes the sandwiches herself: that way, she can ration the jam (which is Sun Jam, a bright-red pulp you buy in plastic tear-off sachets. The Madam wouldn't dream of eating Sun Jam herself. Sun Jam is for the povo, The Madam says. The Madam knows that povo means the masses but apart from that she speaks very little Shona. The Madam would jump at the chance of French evening classes). The Madam demands that the jam sandwiches be eaten standing up in the kitchen or, in the case of The Boy, at the kitchen door because he will make the floor muddy with his wellies (known locally as gumboots). The Madam serves her workers tea in chipped mugs she keeps specially for the purpose. The Madam likes doilies on her own tea-tray. The Madam has been known to draw a line round the inside of her sugar bowl so that she can check how fast her sugar is being swiped.
The Borrowdale Madam now, that's another story.
Friday, January 18, 2008
red dress
My husband says that if we have another baby he will D-I-E. He spells this out because we are at the table with a four-year-old with big ears.
I will D-I-E and be D-E-A-D, my husband says in case I didn't quite get the message. Zimbabwe with one child is bad enough, Zimbabwe with two of the things will be much worse. It's a definite no, darling.
So I plot and I plan and I buy a new red dress from my favourite Chinese shop in the arcade next to Wimpy. It is knee-skimming and bust-skimming and full enough to twirl in seductively. I have not had a new dress for some time because a) there are very few clothes shops in Zimbabwe b) the clothes shops that have anything half-decent are wildly overpriced c) there are cash shortages. Bad ones. The sort that should stop you buying a new dress. I have been trying to feed the whole family -- two adults (one a meat-eater), a calcium-craving four year-old, two dogs and two cats -- on around £2.50 per day for some weeks now. We eat spinach, by the way.
Next morning I float into the dining room nonchalantly, as if this were Paris and I donned a new dress every day. My four-year-old has already learnt how to twist his mummy round his little finger.
"You look SO pretty, mummy," he says. "I want you to wear that dress everyday." And then -- just in case I haven't got the message -- "I want you to throw out all your other dresses and only wear that one."
"What about when it has to be washed?" I ask.
"I want you to wear it wet," he says.
My husband looks up from his mealie-meal porridge. There is no honey today. "Did you know there are cash shortages?" he asks politely.
"It's only zhing-zhong," I say. Zhing-zhong is the word Zimbabweans use when they talk about cheap poor-quality Chinese imports. It was one of the first words my child learnt.
I am having second thoughts about the dress though. Once, when I lived on a different continent, I read a piece about riots somewhere in the East. The police scanned the angry crowds and then picked out and shot someone in a red T-shirt. Our dear leader loves the East. Note to self: do not wear red dress in public, not in the next two months anyway. There are elections in March and people are getting restless. I do not want to be D-E-A-D, not for a red dress.
"So how do you like it?" I give my husband a twirl.
I will D-I-E and be D-E-A-D, my husband says in case I didn't quite get the message. Zimbabwe with one child is bad enough, Zimbabwe with two of the things will be much worse. It's a definite no, darling.
So I plot and I plan and I buy a new red dress from my favourite Chinese shop in the arcade next to Wimpy. It is knee-skimming and bust-skimming and full enough to twirl in seductively. I have not had a new dress for some time because a) there are very few clothes shops in Zimbabwe b) the clothes shops that have anything half-decent are wildly overpriced c) there are cash shortages. Bad ones. The sort that should stop you buying a new dress. I have been trying to feed the whole family -- two adults (one a meat-eater), a calcium-craving four year-old, two dogs and two cats -- on around £2.50 per day for some weeks now. We eat spinach, by the way.
Next morning I float into the dining room nonchalantly, as if this were Paris and I donned a new dress every day. My four-year-old has already learnt how to twist his mummy round his little finger.
"You look SO pretty, mummy," he says. "I want you to wear that dress everyday." And then -- just in case I haven't got the message -- "I want you to throw out all your other dresses and only wear that one."
"What about when it has to be washed?" I ask.
"I want you to wear it wet," he says.
My husband looks up from his mealie-meal porridge. There is no honey today. "Did you know there are cash shortages?" he asks politely.
"It's only zhing-zhong," I say. Zhing-zhong is the word Zimbabweans use when they talk about cheap poor-quality Chinese imports. It was one of the first words my child learnt.
I am having second thoughts about the dress though. Once, when I lived on a different continent, I read a piece about riots somewhere in the East. The police scanned the angry crowds and then picked out and shot someone in a red T-shirt. Our dear leader loves the East. Note to self: do not wear red dress in public, not in the next two months anyway. There are elections in March and people are getting restless. I do not want to be D-E-A-D, not for a red dress.
"So how do you like it?" I give my husband a twirl.
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