"My mother was a princess in her tribe," E. says. E is a greying lecturer, his car long consigned to the garage. A teacher's paltry pay won't get it going.
When he and his brothers were born, they were 'princes', set apart, treated as royalty.
"Even now, if I go back to my rural home, the people will clear the way for me. 'Here, this one is a prince,' they say. 'He must sit next to the chief'."
..........
Mai D's son has finally paid his lobola (bride price). Six of the bride's relatives came to her house last week. ("I told my son, I don't know what I am going to feed them. There isn't even a dollar in the house..."). Mai D's grown daughter was there too, to receive them. "That's important in our culture," she tells me. "The sister of the man must be there." All that's left to pay now is a 'fridge and some blankets. The son's been granted time to find those things.
You must be happy, I say. Mai D had worried the prospective in-laws would set lobola too high: the girl was educated at a South African university (that could have put the price up).
"I am," she says. "My son has done the right thing. He has not run away with someone's child."
"Soon we will have a wedding."
Monday, September 28, 2009
Saturday, September 19, 2009
on the verandah
"Can you believe what we lived through?" he asks. "It doesn't seem possible, not now there's everything in the shops..."
R is a local bank manager. At the height of inflation last year, his monthly salary came to trillions of Zimbabwe dollars. Converted into US, it came to somewhere between 5 and 7.
"We had a bottlestore," he says. "At the bank, I could arrange transfers (most people weren't allowed to make them anymore). I'd buy from Delta, sell for cash -- and change every cent into Zimbabwe dollars."
We're sitting on the verandah in the dusk, a plate of shortbread on the table. The smell of the yesterday-today-and-tomorrow bush floats from the side.
"Remember the money burning?" he says. Enterprising youths would arrange transfers as the Zimbabwe dollar lost value by the hour. "You'd see your money dissolve before your eyes."
We talk about the diamond craze. (Which isn't over: a dealer died this month when he jumped off a moving truck to avoid a police roadblock. Nurses found 1,100 US in his clothes, photocopied the notes with the connivance of a police officer and tried to pass them off as real). He tells a story I haven't heard. "You know that bus-stop near the ZESA offices, the ones by Jairos Jiri?" It's where everyone waits for inter-city transport. "A bus came up, empty apart from a soldier. He was sitting at the front. His gun was under his seat. Everyone was pleased to get transport, they crowded in. But when the doors were shut, the soldier got up."
"Now we're all going to Chiadzwa to fill up the holes you dug," he announced, gun at the ready.
"Most of those people, they'd never been near Chiadzwa. They were businesspeople, people going back to their families in Harare. But they drove to Chiadzwa and they had to work there for two days, filling up pits."
One of the kids empties a whole tin of marbles on the stone floor. From inside, I can hear the soft murmur of National Geographic. We have power tonight, supper waiting. Good things, normal things.
"You know what, though?" he says slowly. "It made us resilient. It made me realise what I could do. It made me more of a man."
ENDS
R is a local bank manager. At the height of inflation last year, his monthly salary came to trillions of Zimbabwe dollars. Converted into US, it came to somewhere between 5 and 7.
"We had a bottlestore," he says. "At the bank, I could arrange transfers (most people weren't allowed to make them anymore). I'd buy from Delta, sell for cash -- and change every cent into Zimbabwe dollars."
We're sitting on the verandah in the dusk, a plate of shortbread on the table. The smell of the yesterday-today-and-tomorrow bush floats from the side.
"Remember the money burning?" he says. Enterprising youths would arrange transfers as the Zimbabwe dollar lost value by the hour. "You'd see your money dissolve before your eyes."
We talk about the diamond craze. (Which isn't over: a dealer died this month when he jumped off a moving truck to avoid a police roadblock. Nurses found 1,100 US in his clothes, photocopied the notes with the connivance of a police officer and tried to pass them off as real). He tells a story I haven't heard. "You know that bus-stop near the ZESA offices, the ones by Jairos Jiri?" It's where everyone waits for inter-city transport. "A bus came up, empty apart from a soldier. He was sitting at the front. His gun was under his seat. Everyone was pleased to get transport, they crowded in. But when the doors were shut, the soldier got up."
"Now we're all going to Chiadzwa to fill up the holes you dug," he announced, gun at the ready.
"Most of those people, they'd never been near Chiadzwa. They were businesspeople, people going back to their families in Harare. But they drove to Chiadzwa and they had to work there for two days, filling up pits."
One of the kids empties a whole tin of marbles on the stone floor. From inside, I can hear the soft murmur of National Geographic. We have power tonight, supper waiting. Good things, normal things.
"You know what, though?" he says slowly. "It made us resilient. It made me realise what I could do. It made me more of a man."
ENDS
Thursday, September 17, 2009
one year on
"Miss - " The girl comes running towards me in the deepening dusk. For a moment I think it is H., the girl across the road who's studying in England but back for the holidays. Trucks come to her family's house and unload things at night, never in the daytime.
When the girl gets closer, I see it's not H. This one is younger, 19 or 20 maybe, with straightened hair (which costs money).
"We are selling clothes," she says. "Shorts, tops. Come and see."
How do I explain that though I'm white, we're struggling like so many others here in the middle-class, wondering where to get school fees from, whether the 'phone will be cut off over unpaid bills, hitching a lift to Mozambique with family, eating spinach-from-the-garden-stuffed pancakes from mix sent from the UK, making tea from 'leaves' in the garden?
As we near the house -- it's the big tiled house on the corner, a double-storey building that looks as if it's been transplanted from Coventry rather than built for the tropics -- another girl emerges. She's wearing hipsters, a strapless top. I can make out the plastic -- they're supposed to be invisible -- straps holding up her Chinese underwear. Zhing-zhong bras, we all wear them.
The clothes are in a sports bag. The girls pull them out: shorts (favoured by masalads but certainly not traditional Zimbabwean wear: Girls La Musica dance group causes a furore each time they don skimpy shorts), tops ("8 dollars each," the girl says. "But we can negotiate"). Some still have the Top Shop price tags. Others are clearly second-hand. Has someone left a bag behind and the girls are disposing of the contents? Or has one of them just come out from England and she's selling off her stuff to raise some cash?
"I don't have cash at the moment," I say (which is true). "I'll have to ask my husband."
In Zimbabwe, that's a perfectly good get-out clause.
....
"My mother's sister has gone," she says. "Last week. They tried to 'phone but there was no-one there." She looks at me reproachfully. There was no-one in the house last week. I imagine the 'phone ringing unanswered.
"Was she old?"
"Not so old," she says. "She had problems - there." She points to her chest.
"Heart problems?" "No, BP. Her younger daughter was working in Harare so they took her to that hospital there. Sakubva Hospital. No, Mabvuku." She names a township to the north of the city.
"If I had money, I would go to Nyanga." The aunt must be buried by now, but I know the ritual: the sitting with the bereaved family through the night, the food gifts that will be expected. "All my money is gone."
"Gone?"
"I send money to Nyanga for my father," she says (her English is a thousand times better than my Shona). "40 dollars. Then my brother's wife wants money for thatching grass, 1 dollar for a bundle. I buy them 25. Then there is no money for my sister's child to buy school books. So I buy books for Khumbulani, 1 dollar 70 a book."
"They are all taking money from you," I observe.
"They say I am their mother, now that our mother has died," she says with a sniff. I am not sure if she is cross with me -- a not-wealthy employer she has the misfortune of working for, a Madam who does not even have enough money to get her hair done each week (or month, or six months) or buy a DVD player or a plasma TV or drive a car that doesn't belong to her in-laws -- or with her desperately-poor family who have fastened onto her as the only one with an above-average income in US dollars. Both, I guess.
.......
"How is school?" I ask A, a teacher.
There was a teachers' strike before we left, 10 days ago. Something has shifted though, because yesterday pupils were streaming out of St Dominics, a government secondary school.
"Some of them are back," she says. "At the junior school, they held a meeting. The parents must pay 50 dollars a term. With the 'incentives' -- localspeak for parent topups -- the teachers will get 330 USA." She uses the local slang: you-sah.
Happy told me about the junior school arrangement. She has a daughter there. "Honestly, we're so fed up," she says. "We want to put M in private school next year. Some of the parents were complaining, they say they can't afford 50 US." Happy can afford it. But many of the parents are civil servants, earning less than 150 a month. They can't.
"At the teachers' college, they are having a sit-in," A says.
It's one year exactly since the unity deal was signed. Some things haven't changed.
When the girl gets closer, I see it's not H. This one is younger, 19 or 20 maybe, with straightened hair (which costs money).
"We are selling clothes," she says. "Shorts, tops. Come and see."
How do I explain that though I'm white, we're struggling like so many others here in the middle-class, wondering where to get school fees from, whether the 'phone will be cut off over unpaid bills, hitching a lift to Mozambique with family, eating spinach-from-the-garden-stuffed pancakes from mix sent from the UK, making tea from 'leaves' in the garden?
As we near the house -- it's the big tiled house on the corner, a double-storey building that looks as if it's been transplanted from Coventry rather than built for the tropics -- another girl emerges. She's wearing hipsters, a strapless top. I can make out the plastic -- they're supposed to be invisible -- straps holding up her Chinese underwear. Zhing-zhong bras, we all wear them.
The clothes are in a sports bag. The girls pull them out: shorts (favoured by masalads but certainly not traditional Zimbabwean wear: Girls La Musica dance group causes a furore each time they don skimpy shorts), tops ("8 dollars each," the girl says. "But we can negotiate"). Some still have the Top Shop price tags. Others are clearly second-hand. Has someone left a bag behind and the girls are disposing of the contents? Or has one of them just come out from England and she's selling off her stuff to raise some cash?
"I don't have cash at the moment," I say (which is true). "I'll have to ask my husband."
In Zimbabwe, that's a perfectly good get-out clause.
....
"My mother's sister has gone," she says. "Last week. They tried to 'phone but there was no-one there." She looks at me reproachfully. There was no-one in the house last week. I imagine the 'phone ringing unanswered.
"Was she old?"
"Not so old," she says. "She had problems - there." She points to her chest.
"Heart problems?" "No, BP. Her younger daughter was working in Harare so they took her to that hospital there. Sakubva Hospital. No, Mabvuku." She names a township to the north of the city.
"If I had money, I would go to Nyanga." The aunt must be buried by now, but I know the ritual: the sitting with the bereaved family through the night, the food gifts that will be expected. "All my money is gone."
"Gone?"
"I send money to Nyanga for my father," she says (her English is a thousand times better than my Shona). "40 dollars. Then my brother's wife wants money for thatching grass, 1 dollar for a bundle. I buy them 25. Then there is no money for my sister's child to buy school books. So I buy books for Khumbulani, 1 dollar 70 a book."
"They are all taking money from you," I observe.
"They say I am their mother, now that our mother has died," she says with a sniff. I am not sure if she is cross with me -- a not-wealthy employer she has the misfortune of working for, a Madam who does not even have enough money to get her hair done each week (or month, or six months) or buy a DVD player or a plasma TV or drive a car that doesn't belong to her in-laws -- or with her desperately-poor family who have fastened onto her as the only one with an above-average income in US dollars. Both, I guess.
.......
"How is school?" I ask A, a teacher.
There was a teachers' strike before we left, 10 days ago. Something has shifted though, because yesterday pupils were streaming out of St Dominics, a government secondary school.
"Some of them are back," she says. "At the junior school, they held a meeting. The parents must pay 50 dollars a term. With the 'incentives' -- localspeak for parent topups -- the teachers will get 330 USA." She uses the local slang: you-sah.
Happy told me about the junior school arrangement. She has a daughter there. "Honestly, we're so fed up," she says. "We want to put M in private school next year. Some of the parents were complaining, they say they can't afford 50 US." Happy can afford it. But many of the parents are civil servants, earning less than 150 a month. They can't.
"At the teachers' college, they are having a sit-in," A says.
It's one year exactly since the unity deal was signed. Some things haven't changed.
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
elections
Horns blaring, the motorcade sweeps past us near Manica, twenty miles from Mozambique's border with Zimbabwe. An outrider on a motorcycle forces our vehicle off the road in this desolate countryside, flanked by the Amatonga hills. Youths hang out of open lorries: some wear election posters for Mozambique's ruling FRELIMO party on their backs and their chests, like paper ponchos. Black SUVs carry smartly-dressed women in elaborate turbans. Official campaigning for Mozambique's October 28 general elections kicked off this weekend. After eight years watching elections in crisis-riddled Zimbabwe, the torn election posters lying in a marshy township in the seaside port of Beira look fairly familiar. Political analysts say President Armando Guebuza is almost certain to be returned to power. His FRELIMO party has been in power here since independence in 1975: Zimbabwe's ZANU-PF has been in power since 1980. Despite the grey landscape -- the rumour is that if you paint your outside, you have to pay more tax -- there is an optimistic vibe. Villages are dotted with the bright yellow and blue shacks of rival mobile 'phone companies. "Tudobom", one advertisement reads: "Everything's fine." Part of the centre of the market town of Chimoio have been cordoned off. Policemen in white shirts stand at the side of the square, I'm immediately cautious. In Zimbabwe, policemen at ruling party rallies do not like white Western journalists. Neither do party officials: just before one poll, I ran into a glaring (now former) agriculture minister Joseph Made at a thatched tea-room near Headlands, near where he'd been addressing a rally. "Hey, camarado," one officer shouts, waving. "Good morning."
Thursday, September 3, 2009
first pizza
"Do you think they're really coming?" he says.
It was a spur-of-the-moment invitation: come and have tea if you've nothing else to do. "That'd be nice," Mr M says. "Bring the boys," I add.
I set out tea-cups, boil the kettle. Take out the tray. Bang icing sugar through a sieve on a sponge cake (and scrape off the burnt bits from the bottom). Put more chairs on the verandah.
There's a hoot at the gate. Finally. Mr M appears, bearing a hexagonal box of pizza. "We always have pizza on Sundays," he says.
My son is excited. "I've never had pizza before," he says. That's not strictly true: Mai C baked pizza on Friday. Pizza and polony sandwiches and sponge cake, at four o'clock on the afternoon. She kept the cheese off the slices reserved for her husband: he has a stomach ulcer and BP. Like so many in Zimbabwe. Mai C sent slices of pizza back with me in an empty ice-cream tub. But fast-food pizza from Nandos, no, my child hasn't tasted that before. "They know us so well in Nandos," Mr M says. The pizza is in halves: clockwise from 12 to 6 it has lots of meat, from 6 to 12, it's pineapple and green-pepper dotted, vegetarian. We eat pizza and drink tea outside and talk of Mr M's plans to become a life-coach. The kids play football on the drive. A memory stirs -- was it really 15, 16 years ago? -- of an Italian verandah, sunflower fields beyond, eating pizza from the oven cut into the hillside.
My son eats the pizza like kids do everywhere in the world: nibbles off the topping, leaves the crust.
It was a spur-of-the-moment invitation: come and have tea if you've nothing else to do. "That'd be nice," Mr M says. "Bring the boys," I add.
I set out tea-cups, boil the kettle. Take out the tray. Bang icing sugar through a sieve on a sponge cake (and scrape off the burnt bits from the bottom). Put more chairs on the verandah.
There's a hoot at the gate. Finally. Mr M appears, bearing a hexagonal box of pizza. "We always have pizza on Sundays," he says.
My son is excited. "I've never had pizza before," he says. That's not strictly true: Mai C baked pizza on Friday. Pizza and polony sandwiches and sponge cake, at four o'clock on the afternoon. She kept the cheese off the slices reserved for her husband: he has a stomach ulcer and BP. Like so many in Zimbabwe. Mai C sent slices of pizza back with me in an empty ice-cream tub. But fast-food pizza from Nandos, no, my child hasn't tasted that before. "They know us so well in Nandos," Mr M says. The pizza is in halves: clockwise from 12 to 6 it has lots of meat, from 6 to 12, it's pineapple and green-pepper dotted, vegetarian. We eat pizza and drink tea outside and talk of Mr M's plans to become a life-coach. The kids play football on the drive. A memory stirs -- was it really 15, 16 years ago? -- of an Italian verandah, sunflower fields beyond, eating pizza from the oven cut into the hillside.
My son eats the pizza like kids do everywhere in the world: nibbles off the topping, leaves the crust.
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
gigi
There are two sides to every central bank chief.
One side: Gideon Gono, the man behind the relentless printing of Zimbabwe dollar notes for more than five years. Zimbabwe's hyperinflation is now the second worst in history, according to Washington's Cato Institute. Dr Gono also stands accused of dishing out freebie tractors, ploughs, combines and fuel in a bid to up ZANU-PF's chances of winning last year's poll; paying youth militias; diverting donor cash to government projects etc, etc. The former opposition MDC would like to see Gono gone.
Another side: the son of a friend (white) was involved in a car accident at the weekend, in Harare's plush Borrowdale Brooke suburb. Dr Gono stopped at the scene and asked if he was alright. When he heard an ambulance had been called, he pulled out his wallet -- and a 50 US note. "Those ambulances are expensive," he said. "That's all I've got on me. Put it towards the ambulance.."
One side: Gideon Gono, the man behind the relentless printing of Zimbabwe dollar notes for more than five years. Zimbabwe's hyperinflation is now the second worst in history, according to Washington's Cato Institute. Dr Gono also stands accused of dishing out freebie tractors, ploughs, combines and fuel in a bid to up ZANU-PF's chances of winning last year's poll; paying youth militias; diverting donor cash to government projects etc, etc. The former opposition MDC would like to see Gono gone.
Another side: the son of a friend (white) was involved in a car accident at the weekend, in Harare's plush Borrowdale Brooke suburb. Dr Gono stopped at the scene and asked if he was alright. When he heard an ambulance had been called, he pulled out his wallet -- and a 50 US note. "Those ambulances are expensive," he said. "That's all I've got on me. Put it towards the ambulance.."
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