Thursday, November 11, 2010

poll talk

"My brother Sam called," Mai A says. "He is saying there will be elections next year."

"We are worried about our father."

President Robert Mugabe has decided that a referendum must be held by March and elections by June next year. Election-talk has already begun in state media: the lead piece in the Herald today is: Gearing for Post-GPA Zim. No matter that there's not enough money to hold the elections, that the voters' roll is in a shambles and that most Zimbabweans are appalled by the thought of fresh polls, with the violence that's sure to go with them.

Mai A's elderly father was badly beaten by the militias in the 2008 elections. They said he had two children who worked for whites.

"He goes to Nyanga hospital for a checkup every month still," she says. "It is his back, it is still giving him pain."

Of course I say yes.

But later, I wonder: will the rural areas be empty during the elections as villagers flee the threat of violence? Is that part of the master-plan?

Monday, November 8, 2010

manna from heaven

"It's you again -" I've already bumped into the man once, waiting at the till. I'm rushing round OK supermarket before heading to the cafe to do my surfing (GPRS isn't working again).

"Where are you from?" I steel myself. "England. But I've lived here for nearly 10 years," I say defensively.

"Whereabouts?" "Eastern England."

"I live in London. Have done for 17 years," he says. I stop.

"So are you coming back to Zimbabwe?" I say.

"Well -- " and he proceeds to launch into a long account of Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai going to London to try to persuade Zimbabweans to go home again. "They found out he talked to the Home Affairs Minister first. When he said: 'I know your problems' they booed him. How could he know their problems when he hadn't talked to them first?"

"You know, the British government offered failed asylum seekers £3,000 to go home. £3,000 and they said they'd pay for their flights and a container to bring their things home in."

(Note to self: check these figures. Were the Brits really this generous?)

"And when they turned it down, they offered them £6,000. And said the British High Commissioner would personally check up on them when they got back. You know, some of them were scared of being attacked."

He looks at the bananas behind us. No-one eavesdropping there.

"They still didn't want to come home. They are mad," he sniffs. "Here at least, they have an extended family. Anyone can get land. This place, why: it's got manna from heaven."

Monday, October 11, 2010

Monday morning

"Do you read the Herald?" the man shouts at me as I unlock my car door.

I've staggered back in the heat -- it's only 9.30 but it's already unbearable -- with a shopping basket from OK supermarket (OK is the best performing counter on the Zimbabwe Stock Exchange, says the Herald when I read it later), plus the newspapers tucked under my arm.

The Herald is the only paper visible.

"Yes," I shoot back. "Well - sometimes." Slight lie (white lie) but if I admitted I had to buy the Herald everyday for work reasons, there'd be more raised eyebrows. As it is, it's just the why-on-earth-would-a-white-housewife-read-the-government-paper-that-costs-a-whole-dollar question.

"What about NewsDay?" NewsDay is South Africa-based media mogul Trevor Ncube's baby (welcomed, I see today also in the Herald, by info minister Webster Shamu).

"That - " I laugh. I know what the required answer is. "Yes, I read it everyday."

Tuesday, September 28, 2010

who wears the trousers?

"You mean, it's not really acceptable to wear trousers?" asks my friend, who's white and from Malawi (and wearing fitted jeans).

"No." The two Shona women choose their words carefully. "It wasn't. You know, there are some churches you can't go to if you're wearing trousers."

"One time, I went to that UBC (United Baptist Church)," says Mai D. "It was cold, and I was wearing tracksuit bottoms under my skirt. They came to me after the service: "Amai, we do not like you to wear trousers."

I remember -- it's years since I thought about this -- a meeting I went to in Harare. Women of the Noughties, or something like that. It must have been 2004 or 5. I was the only white invited. The glamourous guest speaker was well-known, highly successful and married to a top tourism official. She kindly took time to explain zambias to me. Zambias are the wraparound skirts you see women wearing traditionally, often over trousers or a short skirt.

"I might be a businesswoman but when my inlaws come, I must put on my zambia," she said.

My white friend remembers growing up in Malawi under Kamuzu Banda, who banned trousers and short skirts. She recalls having to change quickly after tennis: the short wrapround tennis skirts weren't acceptable in public.

"Things are changing now," says Mai D. "You know, that young son of mine, he told his father and I: 'I will not marry a girl who wears dresses.' "

Monday, September 27, 2010

hallucinating

It's some kind of outdoor function. I think I can see a marquee. I know I have heels on: I feel unsteady as I walk. He -- the Father of the Nation, His Excellency -- is guest of honour.

We're in a crowd. Somehow my child gets pushed to the front and, too far away for me to do anything about it, he's being introduced. "What's your name?" I manage to lipread. I see my boy answering in his clear voice. H.E is smiling paternally. G is in florals next to him. She bends down to catch my son's words.

I manage to push my way -- politely -- through the crowd. H. E and The First Lady are chatting happily. Then I realise G. is talking in Italian.

I ask her (since I'm right next to her and it would be impolite not to): "Dov'e ha (slight hesitation: do I use the formal Lei rather than tu and if I do, what's the verb ending? ) imparato l'italiano?" Where did you learn Italian?

"You speak it too?" G is delighted. She turns her back on the rest of the crowd. We walk off together chatting, our heels sinking into the grass in time with each other. She's cool, I think. I was so wrong about her. Why, I could actually be friends with this woman.

"Oh," she says nonchalantly. "I learnt it when I was cleaning toilets in --" I don't catch the name of the Italian city but I'm too embarrassed to ask, especially as I have to confess I learnt my Italian at university. Poor G, I think. I'm being sincere. She only got a chance to go to secretarial college. Parents didn't send her to university. So typical of Zimbabwean parents' attitudes to girls a few years back, whether they were black or white.

"What does your husband do?" G asks. In a friendly manner. I gulp. "Just...you know, bits of NGO work," I say. One shouldn't lie to a New Best Friend. G doesn't seem 'phased. I can't really ask her what her husband does. We chat a bit more. Croissants are handed round.

And then I wake up. It's Saturday morning. A cold cup of Tanganda tea sits by the bed. The power's on. Nothing has changed.

It was a good dream, while it lasted.

Monday, September 6, 2010

greenshirts

"There are nine roadblocks on the way to Harare," my mother-in-law warns. "Drive slowly."

The police are on a fund-raising spree, it seems. Spot fines for speeding (and a host of other infractions). That would be good if it curbed Zimbabwe's road chaos. Road accidents are -- state media says -- the second main cause of death here.

We drive carefully, marvelling at the number of flashy, non-number plated cars happily steaming past us. If we're going at just under 120 km per hour -- the legal limit -- what speed must they be going at? There are suspicions (who knows whether they're justified?) that the drivers being targeted are mainly from one racial group.

We watch for police round every bend, every kopje, our hearts leaping every time we see a flash of green. The police wear luminous lime green tank-tops. And then we realise that that particular shade of green is obviously this year's hot colour. Women are wearing it: stretchy T-shirts, lime-green jumpers. Men sport tailored lime-green shirts (possibly Van Heusen, but probably Mbare flea market).

The thing is, you don't know for sure the lime green-wearers are not police until you get near them.

The journey takes us half an hour longer than normal.

Saturday, August 28, 2010

requests

The man hobbles up as I pay for the paper. He's probably from the rural areas, judging by the hat. He can barely speak English. "Please, one dollar," he says. "For sadza." And I, who am usually wary of all street requests, give in.

In town, the street kids follow.

My desperation mounts.

The girl who mans the town's only well-stocked (that's relative, of course) bookshop sees me park the car. Charity, her name is. She knows me well, always asks after my son. She runs after me in the street. She looks away as she tells me she needs 40 dollars ( "20 or 40") and why. Her father is in hospital. I know this to be true. He has diabetes and has recently had a leg amputated. Charity's mother goes to see him every day: she has to or else how will he be fed? But the transport -- from Sakubva high-density suburb to the Provincial Hospital -- costs a minimum of 30 US a month.

Charity is looking after her sister's child and needs school fees in 15 days. That's another 20 at least to find (and that's not counting incentives). She needs to pay the city council 30 dollars a month rates. Her father used to do this but he is not working at the moment, of course. The electricity bill is 20 dollars. I've lost count but the running total I see is already 100 US. She is paid precisely 100 US a month. A perfectly normal horrible salary in Zimbabwe.

"How often do you shop?" she asks me, seeing my basket.

"A little most days," I say. "I buy bread and vegetables."

She sighs.

"I shop once a month," she says. "For everything."

I feel -- as I feel so often here - powerless, frustrated. Where do you start? Where do you stop?

A sms message printed in the newspaper: "Morgan Tsvangirai has not delivered on his promises to workers."

Tuesday, August 24, 2010

dog's life

"Can I ask you something?" The security guard in Hussein's Clothing (and flashsticks and DVD players and blankets) waits politely for an answer.

"Yes?" I brace myself. Usually it's a request for work.

"What project do you work on?" I look at him blankly for a second.

"I mean, I know you work on a project somewhere. What is it?"

Oh. He has mistaken me for an NGO worker. No wonder: some locals think whites fall into two stereotyped categories: a) wicked white farmers (or to be pitied, depending on which side you're on) or b) rich NGO workers.

"I don't have a project," I say.

He waits. And then I say: "Actually, I'm writing a book." Which is true, though I do do other things.

"A storybook," I quickly add, just in case he thinks I'm writing about Zimbabwe. Not so long ago, that was a crime punishable not quite by death, but certainly by imprisonment.

"What's it called?" I'm stumped. I've written 180 pages for the latest version, but I still don't have a title. Or rather, the title changes by the week. I need to tell him something though, to bolster my story.

"A Dog's Life," I say, thinking fast. (There is a dog in it) The guard nods, satisfied.

I just hope I haven't jinxed my plot now.

Monday, August 23, 2010

not the only one

"You're back?" The woman manning the desk at the Crocodile Farm in Victoria Falls looks at us in disbelief.

"I know. We were here yesterday afternoon. But he liked it so much we had to come again." I point to my son.

If it were up to me, I would not be here. Crocodiles may not be the cuddliest of animals but I don't like the thought of them being slaughtered.

It is not up to me, of course.

Our guide recites impassively. "These crocodiles are nearly three years old." I look at the heaving mass of grey (because they are grey really, not bright green like in the toy shops) bodies in what's really just an unpainted swimming pool.

"When do they get skinned?" a tourist asks. "At three years old," he says. We have already browsed in the gift shop, seen the crocodile handbags, belts and keyrings, the stuffed croc babies. It's all a bit close for comfort, I feel.

But my son hangs on the guide's every word. He watches with glee when the crocodiles are fed elephant meat (and the resident kitten gets given its very own elephant titbit: how many cats do the crocs go through per year, I wonder grimly?) The guide shows him how the crocs only see movement: when a piece of elephant meat floats gently millimetres away from a large croc's nostrils, he doesn't snap in the slightest.

In the car after the tour, he asks: "Can we go again this afternoon?"

Turns out he isn't the only one enchanted by the Crocodile Farm. Paging through the Herald this morning, I see Libyan leader Muamar Gaddafi's son Lieutenant-Colonal Saadi has been visiting Victoria Falls: "Lt-Col Gaddafi yesterday visited various tourist attractions, including...Crocodile farm and the Falls themselves."

Gaddafi said he found the farm and the Falls"very impressive."

Thursday, August 12, 2010

abducted

My husband's face is white when he finds me, somewhere near the second-hand shoe stall. "Where've you been? You said you'd be back in half an hour," he says.

To be honest, I'd lost track of time. The vendors at the flea market have been opening new bales, tipping out mountains of used clothes onto huge tarpaulins.

"New order," they sing (actually, it's a kind of rap). "New order. Dollar - dollar." US, they add, just in case anyone thought they might get away with using now Zimbabwe dollars.

There's a technique to clothes-hunting on new order days. You pick a corner of the tarpaulin, check your handbag's tucked securely under your arm and you shovel through the fabric nearest to you. Then you fling what you're discarded into the centre of the pile and dig deeper. Another kind of mining, I guess, in diamond country. A tailor has set up shop with an ancient black Singer under an adjacent tarpaulin.

Women sit on the dust beyond the edge of the pile, munching what smells like chicken.

I find a black top with a teardrop back to it and a fitted black jacket from Australia, both for US 1. For 2 US, pyjama bottoms, almost new and a weeny bit too long, for my child, in a pile still flecked with washing powder. The skeleton-printed swimming trunks I've been eyeing I discard, after the vendor suddenly hikes his price to US 3 when he spies a murungu showing interest.

I'm just thinking of shoes when I spy my husband.

"Abducted? Don't be paranoid," I say. "This isn't South Africa." My brother-in-law is terrified to see me walking on my own in the smallish market-town they live in in the Orange Free State. "It happens," he insists.

But then, this morning, I open Zimbabwe's state daily. A women has been abducted in broad daylight from a busy market in Machipisa, Harare. She's bundled into the back of a car with blacked-out windows. One of the abductors stuffs a hanky laced with something into her face so she loses consciousness. She comes to, she tells police after her escape, in a building "filled with human heads."

Police say they believe the building is somewhere near the city centre.

Monday, August 2, 2010

leaving

"I've been meaning to call you," S. says.

I nearly walked past my pharmacist-friend, hurrying along this busy street on my morning errands. I have plastic bags filled with bread, milk and -- unusually -- a bottle of wine. It's a gift, meant for our host tomorrow night. I know from experience that Shona women (the respectable, older kind) do not approve of women drinking.

I resist an urge to make sure the cork isn't poking out (It is).

"We're leaving," she says.

When?

"This weekend. The youngest has been ill. I was in Harare all week with him last week. He's got asthma. It was terrible, terrible. And S- said: 'You have to move here.'"

It makes sense. S-, my friend's husband, has been in Chitungwiza, Harare's dormitory town, for months now. He travels home at weekends but the bus trip -- if bus he takes -- is five, six hours, double the length of time it takes in a car. Term finishes next week: it's a good time to leave. Still, I'm genuinely sad.

"I'll call you when we're in town," I promise. I move to hug her. Is it me - or do I sense an imperceptible holding back? She and I often hug (Shona women do, a special style of bottom-sticking-out hug that means only your shoulders and the top part of your body touch) but not on a street, I realise.

Walking away, I think that I am the only murungu (white person) on the street. Although many people recognise me, they still watch. Maybe she felt the eyes.

"Look after your marriage," she whispers as a parting shot. "However bad it gets, look after it."

dogs

"I was praying someone would come before Monday," the man said.

He and three other Zimbabwean workers were showing animal activists round a site in West Nicholson where Chinese nationals had already eaten three dogs.

"Their dog meat runs out on Monday," he added.

A fourth dog was there. He didn't know the horrid fate that was sure to be his, if the vets hadn't intervened. The Chinese labourers -- they have been contracted to work on a massive expansion programme by the main local cellphone company -- have a particularly cruel way of slaughtering the dogs: they hang them up in a tree by a string so they defecate and then hit them over the head with an iron bar.

The dog wagged its tail. Trusting. Too trusting.

It may have been bought from a villager: the Chinese are said to offer 10 US per dog. That's more than a chicken, which 'only' fetches 6 US. Tempting, if you're living in abject poverty. The local headman was (gratifyingly) furious with what's happening: he insisted on accompanying the activists on their mission.

Happily, the dog was rescued.

But the network expansion programme is nationwide: presumably Chinese labourers aren't confined to West Nicholson. How many other dogs are in danger?

Thursday, July 22, 2010

we make a plan

I don't recognise the number that flashes up on my cellphone screen, not at first. It's 091 - 5, which means it's one of the new ones. (Econet, Zimbabwe's biggest mobile 'phone company, embarked on an expansion drive last year, pumping out 091 - 3 lines, followed by 091 - 4, then - 5 and now - 6. There's a snob-factor to having an ancient 091 - 2 number: it means you paid millions for your line or at the very least 40 US).

"Hey, howz bn yr wk so far?"

"Little C is fine." Then I realise who it is: Mai C, Yollanda's neighbour. Somehow she's seen the parcel: a plastic bag full of donated Dove soap, deodorant and toothpaste I hastily flung together on Sunday and handed to Yollanda.

"Saw e Dove roll-on u sent 4 Yollanda, was wondering if I cd hv 1. Am so into Dove prod. Thnx."

"That's what'll happen," says N grimly, a few hours later in the day. She's a local street-kid worker, a member of the ethnic Shona majority. "You can't take the stuff to the child yourself. People will think you have lots to spare."

Besides, she adds, it's important not to give goods in any quantity. "Just a small amount at a time, enough to last two days. Otherwise it will get sold."

She tells of doing her rounds in Sakubva township, handing out bags of donated mealie-meal and maize.

"They sell it," she says. "Sometimes I get to the end of the street and I go back to the first house to make a surprise visit and I find them already spooning it out into smaller containers."

"When I ask what they're doing, they say they want to buy bread."

She shrugs. Back to the Yollanda problem: "Best you give me what you want to give her, and I'll take it to the house."

"They won't bother me."

Tuesday, July 13, 2010

closing

"I just need a break from Zimbabwe," she says with a sigh.

She opened a restaurant in this eastern city nearly two years ago. It was in a beautiful old house: pine floors, teak furniture, a shaded verandah. She specialised in high-quality cuisine: exquisitely-served pancakes with maple syrup imported from Canada (she's Canadian), butternut soup with a hint of spice.

Her food was so good that the US ambassador reportedly dined there on a rare visit to the town. (Wonder what he made of the ZANU-PF headquarters just opposite: were they delivering truckloads of sugar the day of his stopover?)

"I'm closing at the end of the month," she says, casting a glance into my half-empty shopping basket. "I just couldn't break into the market."

Maybe there wasn't enough money in town, I suggest.

There are already two coffee-shops catering for the chattering classes. There's also the violently-red painted concrete Burger Bar and at least two Wimpies for customers wanting to watch the world go by over a Coke. ("Don't order any food here," Shingie whispered when we sat at the BB on a sunny Friday lunch-hour recently. "I got food-poisoning last time.")

"I couldn't break into the cliques," she sighs. "It's Small Town Syndrome. In Harare, there's a buzz. People are out all the time, spending money. Here - "

She shrugs, casts a glance at the wilted carrots and beetroot behind us.

"I learnt my lesson. I guess they'll detain me at Heathrow though, if I arrive on a one-way ticket?"

mothers

The woman is well-drawn, for a 10-year old. A floaty purple dress, high heels, black hair. Yollanda lingers over the hair. She makes it curl up at the ends.

"Is that your mummy?"

The children have been asked to draw things that are special to them. Most of them have drawn family members and friends. There are cats and dogs (Foxy, Spicy and Spider, Ruvimbo’s dogs are called). Baisel has drawn a cellphone, another child a flat-screen TV.

I know very little about Yollanda’s mother, except that she’s not there very often. In the days of the diamond rush, she disappeared to the Marange fields. She reappears every so often with a bucket of maize, the neighbours say. And sells the cast-off clothes Yollanda’s been given.

"Best not to give the clothes and the bath-soap to her," says Mai Caroline. "Give it to N, who lives across the road."

The women wonder what to do about Yollanda. How can you report her to Social Welfare when the department is barely functioning, they say, when state orphanages (and even private ones) are struggling to feed the children in their care?

"If she runs away from a home, she’ll be a street child and that’s worse," says Mai D.

But Yollanda is fast turning into a problem child. She steals, the neighbours say. Teenage boys – friends of her half-brother Courage – hang round the house.

"Have you drawn your mummy, Yollanda?" I ask again.

She looks at me shyly. "No. It’s you."

Saturday, June 26, 2010

rumblings

It's the hat I see first -- pink flowered, large-brimmed -- as I drive in the gate.

My husband is closing the gate behind me. As I unpack children, school bags, a tin of sausages, a laptop and a bottle of Avon foundation procured after lengthy and complicated negotiations (make-up for white skin in a country where whites make up less than 0.1 percent of the population is not readily available), I realise the hat has stopped to talk to my husband.

It's an angry conversation, though the anger is not directed at him.

"And you ain't seen nothing yet," she says loudly.

Zimbabwe's constitutional outreach programme started -- supposedly -- on June 23rd. Things aren't going well. The official Herald daily says merely that the process has got off to a "slow start", something to do with delegates not getting their supper. Reports from the former opposition MDC tell a different story. The MDC and its supporters want presidential terms restricted to 2 in the new constitution: the party's opponents are (predictably) determined not to let that happen. ZANU-PF has launched Operation Chimumumumu (Operation Shut Up/Dumb), forbidding all but selected and properly primed villagers to air their views to outreach officers. There are reports of MDC huts being burnt down. Today, 3 MDC supporters have been abducted in Marondera.

I watch the woman in the hat - she's a contact of the MDC MP who's frequently in our suburb -- make her angry way down the road and think of snatched conversations on road corners two years ago, when Zimbabwe's rumbling political crisis exploded into real violence.

Will it happen again?

Friday, June 25, 2010

like it and (l)ump it

Frustrated store-owners in Harare are taking concrete measures against shoplifters who tuck stolen goods between their thighs: constructing 'humps' at store exits to force the thieves to drop their loot. Shoplifting is a growing problem in Zimbabwe, where workers are struggling to survive high prices following the abolition of the local dollar in 2009. Thieves are moving in organised gangs of up to 10, reports the Herald daily: many of them are women wearing long skirts. They take advantage of crowded supermarket aisles to slip goods under their skirts, squeezing it between their legs. The humps -- sometimes no more than simple steps -- are being installed at entrance and exit points to stop women "engaging in the between-the-thighs form of pilfering," says the Herald. "The assumption is that there is no way a person can go over [the hump], lifting one leg and then the other, without letting go of the loot under the skirt."

Tuesday, June 15, 2010

rags to riches

The annual OK Grand Challenge is Zimbabwe's answer to Epsom: think excited crowds and oversized flowery hats for the ladies (Dorcas Zireva , wife of OK boss Willard, to made it into the Sunday Mail this year in her large pink creation) Shoppers at the OK chain win points for a couple of months before the race in June (in Mutare in May, I watched a whole village -- literally -- being brought to do their shopping at OK to get a chance of winning). They can bet on the day: shoppers also collect loyalty points towards a draw for a car -- a locally-assembled BT50 Mazda truck -- and a house. This year's event got huge coverage: on the day, roads were closed leading to the Borrowdale race-course and special buses were laid on.

The winner of the Mazda draw was a 28-year old man named Gift. His is a real rags-to-riches story. His surname is Madhumbu, which in Shona means rags. A person who dresses in madhumbu, explained the local Sunday Mail, is "a very poor person who in most cases is the laughing stock of his community." His life had taken the route mapped out by his name: he was a struggling motor mechanic who'd never amassed enough money to buy a car. He'd entered the OK Grand Challenge "many times" before but never won a thing.

Madhumbu was stunned when he heard he'd won.

"I was living a life of rags," he said. "But now it is a thing of the past."

Sunday, June 13, 2010

interviewing in a bikini

"You've been to Hot Springs?" queries the policeman at the roadblock just by the Chimanimani turnoff. "For leisure purposes?" He looks suspicious.

Yes, we assure him, for leisure purposes. My wet plait and the child in the back convince him. He waves us on.

Now I'm beginning to wonder if I was wrong. Honestly and truly, we did go to Hot Springs -- a rustic resort (if you can call it that -- Doris Lessing in "African Laughter" says it's ruined and that book was published back in 1993) on the edge of the Chiadzwa diamond fields -- for leisure purposes. It was a Saturday afternoon, mid-winter, and the idea of swimming in a naturally hot pool was tempting. So that's what we did: took a picnic, bundled up the child, filled a couple of thermoses, and stayed an hour-and-a half. Hot Springs has just been controversially "sold" by the Chimanimani Rural District Council for 60,000 US to a company to house mainly South African workers on the diamond fields, but it is still open for day-trippers. It was a dreamy afternoon, mostly spent lolling in the hot water under a mopani tree.

Maybe though I think now, I should have been a bit more diligent, more of a newshound. There was a group of four (fairly loutish, half-drunk) Afrikaans males also in the pool. I should have probed, asked them what was going on.

The thing is, I was wearing a bikini. Can one interview in a bikini? Especially when you're interviewing undercover, which necessarily entails a bit of banter. My husband was a couple of metres away. He understands the work drive -- he does it himself -- but this was a wee bit delicate. "Thanks for bringing your wife," they'd shouted to him. "Don't you want to come to watch the rugby with her?" After that, could I really have swam over to them, smiled innocently and started chatting?

Maybe. I just couldn't. So that's my defence. No interviews in a bikini. You have to draw the (bikini) line somewhere. Next time I'll wear a one-piece and shorts.

BBC vs CNN

Zimbabweans are good at acronyms. They have a high IQ, they say (I - queue, get it?).

News-related acronyms are popular. Not long ago, Zimbabweans admitted ruefully that many of their absent relatives were BBC workers (British Backside Cleaners). The latest acronym I've just seen is a CNN relationship - Condom Not Needed.*

(*of course, generally it is, says the Manica Post's Blabbermouth columnist)

Friday, June 11, 2010

stories

My son's very good at keeping a secret, one of his Shona teachers says.

"You know, in the war, the soldiers (she means the Rhodesian army, white and black) used to come to the villages. They'd find the kids playing outside on their own."

"Has anyone got a story?" they'd ask.

"And the brightest ones would say: Yes, yes, I've got a story. The comrades (black freedom fighters) came last night and my mother cooked a chicken and we fed the comrades and then they went."

The soldiers would gently ask more questions, all the while telling the kids "what good stories they had," she remembers. Then, of course, vengeance would come.

The teacher's story makes me feel sad. I've just taught Creative Writing at a school with kids my child's age and seen how they fall over each other to be the first to tell their "story."

Sad too, because my child's grandfather was a soldier in the Rhodesian army.

Tuesday, June 8, 2010

teenage mum

"I've got some depressing news," Shingie's mother says. She is shorter than me, half my size. I feel like a giant. "Shingie's pregnant."

She has to repeat it. "Shingie is pregnant." Not Shingie. I have a photograph of her in her school sports gear, navy-blue and white. She's standing with eight or nine team-mates, against a stunning red poinsettia bush. Shingie is the smiling girl, not a stunner, not plain either. She has two sisters. Chenge isn't married yet: J has two children, F and N. F showed me her 12 US dollar phone yesterday. Mummy sent it for her 9th birthday, she told me proudly (What about brain tumours? I wanted to say but stopped myself just in time).

How old is Shingie? 15, 16 maybe? Her mother took her out of boarding school only last year. Baring, near the Old Mutare Mission on the way to Africa University, where Ndabaningi Sithole was buried. Shamie hated it there. Her mother insisted she stay though. Was she trying to avoid this sort of thing happening? Then the money ran out and Shingie had to come home. Her father doesn't live with them. I met him once, downtown in Mutare. He had some kind of grain-selling place. Shingie's mother insists she is a Ms.

She looks up at me, her braids laced with grey. Mai Bruce always teases her about that grey. I wonder how she reacted to Shingie's news. Did she shout, scream, threaten to throw her out?

"I was shocked, mostly," she says.

We do not voice the unvoiceable, the 1,300 who die of AIDS here every week. But the question hovers.

Monday, June 7, 2010

pink hair

Pink Hair No 6 (7?) I saw this Saturday at Hot Springs resort. She looked like the others...sort of, well, badger-y, one local puts it.

There is a New Hairdresser in town. Which means we murungu (white) madams now have the princely choice of two (three if you count Earl but he's mainly for the kids and the wash-and-set generation). New Hairdresser's advent -- "from Jo'burg," the whispers go, "she had her own salon there" -- has caused no little consternation. First, if you go to New Hairdresser, will Long Established Old Hairdresser find out? And if Long Established Old finds out and is (as is likely) aggrieved, will you be able to go back to her if, heaven forbid, New Hairdresser should leave? Old Hairdresser has been in town for more than a decade: at present she's located on the near-deserted first floor of a department store, her salon complete with huge posters of pageboy cuts and perms straight from the 1980s. She knows everything about everybody. When her son announced his split from his wife, locals whispered the ex would never be able to get her hair done again, not in this town at least: Old Hairdresser would slit her throat.

The problem with Old, though, the madams whisper, is that she uses The Cap to do highlights, a close-fitting plastic thing with holes in to let her hook through strands of your hair. It's an instrument of mediaeval torture if ever there was one: you may come out of the salon with highlights but you'll also come out minus half a head of hair.

Chiefly because of The Cap, the madams have migrated. New Hairdresser can do foils, they tell each other. New Hairdresser operates from her home in the grassy suburbs (Her husband, it's rumoured, works in the diamond fields not far from Hot Springs). New Hairdresser cuts a shiny, shapely bob but she has one weakness - a predilection for pink stripes. She adds them to every other white madam's hair-do: does she ask them first, I wonder? Pink is her personal signature. It's also the best way she's got to thumb her nose at Old.

*And no, I do not have pink stripes. My husband cuts my hair.

Monday, May 31, 2010

the (forty)seven virgins

There are only 47 surgeons left in Zimbabwe, a newspaper reports, quoting the local college of surgeons.

I decide to put a quick 'phone call through to a local specialist to see if he'll comment.

"Only 47 what left in Zimbabwe?" queries Dr G.

"47 surgeons, so they're saying. Isn't this evidence of how bad things have got here?" My voice tails off. Maybe 47 isn't such a bad number after all. Maybe there were only 49 to start off with. Maybe I don't have the slightest clue what I'm talking about.

"47 what?" he repeats. 'Phone connectivity is notoriously bad in Zimbabwe: today's it's even worse than normal.

"Oh, surgeons." He sounds relieved. "I thought you were asking me to confirm there were only 47 virgins left in the country."

Monday, May 17, 2010

love you

"I love you," the man sitting on the wall by the state TelOne office shouts as I go past. " I do."

"I love you."

His voice floats behind me like an echo.

"Serious."

"Really," I want to say primly. "I am 37 (help!, how did that happen?) and you, young man, do not have a clue about love. Besides, you don't say serious, you say seriously."

What I do is swap my shopping basket to the other hip and stride to my (mother-in-law's) car.

I am getting old, I fear.

Tuesday, May 4, 2010

central locking

A dollar is hard to come by, Zimbabweans say. So here's one incredibly inventive way a spurned Zimbabwean woman has devised to raise 2,000 dollars: lock your lover.

Central locking can be a delicate problem in Zimbabwe, when it's not the car-kind. In a country where many still believe in witchcraft -- or versions of -- central locking can be a useful safety feature of a sexual relationship. If you don't want your man to stray, just lock him. He won't be able to perform with anyone else.

But what happens when you forget to unlock him?

That's the problem Malvin Herbert Muchirahondo of eastern Zimbabwe is grappling with. He says his ex, supermarket till operator Precious Mushati, "locked" him while they were in a relationship last year. He went back to his wife (with whom he had a second child whilst still in a relationship with Ms Mushati) but found he'd been "locked": he couldn't sleep with her. He blames Ms Mushati.

Half-page photos of Mr Muchirahondo and Ms Mushati have been splashed across the local weekly for the last three weeks. Each time it's the same photo. It's a picture taken in winter, judging from the fleece he's wearing. Ms Mushati has a short wig. She's looking down, away from the camera. He's got his arm round her and they both look.... happy.

To begin with, Ms Mushati denied she'd locked her ex. Then -- scenting an opportunity (cashiers earn around 120 US per month) -- she said she could unlock him. At a price, of course: 2,000 US. That's small change for the Supas of this world, no doubt, but not for everyone else.

The case has aroused huge interest locally: readers have texted in to give Mr Muchirahondo their advice. "It's sad, but it can be reversed," one reader promised. I notice that the latest "locking" article in the Manica Post advises that he try 4 cloves of raw garlic a day.

Thursday, April 29, 2010

squirrel for supper

"Mum, Audrey has eaten the squirrel," he says.

We have black squirrels in our garden. To be honest, I don't like seeing them there. The cats try to kill them and they're mamba-prey (ie mamba-magnets). I'd rather the squirrels were in somebody else's avocado tree.

My son learns a lot from his Shona friends. Vocabulary, for example. Audrey, Sam and I went walking last night as the power cut deepened. The moon was rising, oversized in a blue-satin sky as only an African moon can be.

"Look, Mai Sammy," Audrey said. "It's mwedzi." One more word to chalk up, for me and for Sam.

He picks up good manners too. Audrey and he collect firewood for me, late in the afternoon when the sun has dried the branches. "She'll make a good daughter-in-law," Mai Bruce laughs. Shona culture advises that couples marry vematongo (from the same 'ruins', the same place). How does that work when you both come from the same geographical area but you're black and white, I wonder?

Another thing he's picking up is what Audrey calls Shona medicine. This morning Sam took me to see a tiny weed with a pink stalk. "You use it when you have a sore eye," he said, showing me the milky sap that prickled from where he'd pulled it off at ground-level. "Gogo (granny) uses it," Audrey said proudly.

Feeling virtuous I led her to our aloe vera. I've used the jelly-like sap on burns before. "This is a good plant too, isn't it, Audrey?" She sniffed. "For chicks, yes," she said. She meant the feathered kind: huku.

He's learning good things, then. Still, squirrel and sadza for supper makes me feel rather squeamish.

Tuesday, April 27, 2010

local shopping basket

Supa is in the supermarket. He sweeps in just ahead of me.

In fact, he stands aside very politely to let me get a basket. He has a big, burly man beside him in a leather jacket -- a bodyguard? Or just a friend?

Supa is Supa Mandiwanzira, the head of the local Affirmative Action Group (AAG).* He's an ex news anchor on the state ZBC News Hour (News Horror, as a Shona journalist we knew used to call it). I guess he left because of pay. The car in the supermarket is gleaming black BMW something-or-other. Nearly minibus sized.

I bet he didn't fill out a parking ticket.

Supa is causing a stir in the aisles of Spar. I manage to get one behind him at the checkout. He flirts with the cashier (who's reduced to giggles), catches my eye too. I engage in a scientific study of his purchases as I clutch my purchases of smelly butcher's offcuts (for the dog) and a pack of apples. Booze, basically. Lots of cans of Hunter's cider (now that's not local) and at least four bottles of what looks like brandy, the imported kind. And mineral water, imported too (now who has the money to buy that?). There are a couple of packets of Lobel's Strawberry Creams. At least they're local. He opens a wallet, wadded with cash (dollars and rands), hands over a 100 dollar note (there's almost no change). I can just see his ID card. He is polite, jovial. The security guards chat with him.

"That was Mr Supa Mandiwanzira," breathes the cashier when it's my turn to pay.

He's obviously a hero.

* I hear him on ZBC Saturday morning, urging white and foreign companies to comply with recently-gazetted indigenisation laws. The former opposition MDC is trying to get the laws toned down to make them more investor-friend (one suggestion is to let third or four generation white Zimbabweans be considered indigenous): Mugabe (and Supa's) ZANU-PF is adamant the law stands.

Tuesday, April 20, 2010

token of appreciation

"You'll have to pay him for the months in between," Mr B says.

We've had the union on the 'phone. A gardener who disappeared after payday last August has resurfaced. He wants a payout: 630 US at the very least. Notwithstanding the fact that he was absent without a medical certificate for more than five days (more than five months, more like). According to the National Employment Code of Conduct Regulations 2006 (I have a copy), that's grounds for dismissal.

Fed up of threatening 'phone calls from the union -- and no, it's not the straw-hatted Joseph Chinotimba-led one -- I've trekked to the government's Labour Relations office, behind the supermarket. Mr B is the resident Labour Officer, the secretary tells me. I follow him down a school corridor.

What? I'm aghast. "But he ran away!"

Mr B taps his pencil. He is wearing a smart olive suit -- not local -- and looks to be in his early 20s. "You should have come here first, to tell me," he says.

Outside the window - it's one that opens top-to-bottom, uncannily like a college at Cambridge where I had tutorials in a different life -- a girl passes, calls at him through the glass. His wife? She has already texted to check on him once. (He told me) We weren't underpaying our worker. In fact, Mr B says, what we were paying was -- is still -- a "very generous salary."

"You were kind," he says. "And that is weak."

"What about a dismissal package?" (I can see I'll have to fork out something, whether or not I'm in the right.)

Mr B concedes that as we hadn't employed the worker for a full five years, no package is mandatory. "But really," he says, "you have to be kind." (What? I thought you'd just said that because I was kind, I was weak?). One month's money for every year worked. And re-employ the worker. He will draft a contract for us. A three-month one. "This time you can stop his work without any problems," he says.

"But -- " he looks at me -- "you understand this contract, I will be doing it out of office hours. In my spare time." I understand. All too well. "You mean I must pay you a token of appreciation?"

Monday, April 12, 2010

lodge

"It's such a shame," she sighs. "The place is ruined."

They lived in the manager's house at a well-known hotel on the Mozambican border. Lived, that is, until the owners mysteriously fled to Spain and the hotel changed hands. They -- they're close relatives of mine by marriage -- were told that "an Asian" had bought the place.

The story seemed to stick. The new owner ordered all pork out of the hotel freezers. The bar was no longer to sell alcohol, workers were told. The workers predicted a grim future: the hotel was a popular drinking spot for locals (read diamond dealers) from the nearby city of Mutare.

Then the Castles reappeared. GG (the bank chief) had bought the place, the whisper went. For 2 million US. A new sign went up outside. My relatives were told to pack their bags.

She went back to the hotel this week, walked down the dried mud path to the house she and her husband lived in for seven years after they lost their farm. In six months the place is unrecognisable. The grass is knee-high. The wooden struts holding up the walk-round verandah have disappeared. Baboons have pulled out thatch from the roof by the fistful, leaving gaping holes for the late rains to fall inside.

"Don't even walk round the front," said next-door's cook, who'd followed her down. "You'll be too upset."

She filled a plastic bag with grapefruit and limes from the (now unfertilised and untended) orchard and slipped away.

Tuesday, March 30, 2010

exhibition

There are muddied (or are they bloodied?) toothpaste tubes, suspended on pieces of cotton against a swirling river scene.

"What do you think of this picture?" a gallery-goer asks.

"Erm....well, the colours are strong," I say. Actually, the picture -- titled Flesh and Souls -- is disturbing in a Dantean kind of way (which it's probably meant to be). The toothpaste tubes are suicides, I think. Is this supposed to be a reflection of Zimbabwe's plight?

I'm at the opening of an exhibition at the National Gallery (and no, it's not one of two exhibitions shut down by police in Harare and Bulawayo last week). Over samoosas, I meet the provincial director of Zimbabwe's National Arts Council.

"You see, the reason why I'm so pleased with this exhibition is that we went out to the people to get these exhibits," he says.

"It's not like HIFA," the annual Harare International Festival of the Arts. HIFA is a glitzy well-run show with international artistes, musicians, actors and -- so disgruntled locals say -- not many Zimbabweans.

"Our artists actually have to apply to be in HIFA," says the NAC man. "But WE go out to find the artists. Some of them are from really remote places."

It sounds like a reasonable argument, albeit one I've heard before from government people. The thing is though, the gallery's directors have just admitted privately that they couldn't find any new paintings for this exhibition. No-one in the rural areas "has money for paint," I've been told.

So the director -- young, dynamic Elizabeth -- had to 'phone Harare and get paintings hurriedly couriered up to Mutare. So much for fostering local talent.

Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Shona lessons

"What you have to know is: Shona isn't about Robert Mugabe," the teacher says. "It's about Zimbabwe, where we all live."

We're sitting in a parents' meeting by candlelight (thanks to yet another power cut). My son's Shona teacher is angry: white parents aren't pushing their kids to do their Shona homework.

Zimbabwe's indigenous languages are a compulsory part of the school curriculum here. All well and good, you'd think: I'm keen for my child to improve his grasp of a second language as soon as possible. The problem is that Zimbabwe's chequered history of white-black relations weighs heavily. Not every white parent wants their child to learn Shona, it turns out.

"I tell them: speak with your maid, play with Shona kids. You need to practise," says the teacher. "But I get all sorts of answers: 'I'm not allowed' or 'the maid's not allowed to speak Shona to me' or "I'm not allowed to play with the children on my street. Black kids are well-behaved, you know. Most of them, at least."

"I love my language," she says passionately. "I want your kids to like it too." I look at her in the dim light: bright, young, articulate, well-educated (probably better so than many of the parents present). Zimbabwe didn't go through apartheid but some of the provisions of the former minority regime came pretty close to it: we have black friends who weren't allowed to live in the "good" suburbs 'til 1980. I know of three Shona families who bought classy homes in one low-density area in Mutare immediately after independence was declared on April 18th. They'd saved the cash, been itching to move for years.

Memories of the-whites-who-wouldn't-mix die hard. It must seem sometimes that many of them still won't.

zwangendaba

"Can you spell that? -" The doctor's receptionist obliged. " Z-W-A-N-G-E-N-D-A-B-A. There. Do you need me to repeat it?".

After nine years in southern Africa, I pride myself on being able to spell a lot of local names, both in Shona and Ndebele. I read them in the paper every day, for one thing. But Zwangendaba, my newish doctor's first name: that was one name I hadn't come across. I'd seen the initial Z on his gold-embossed plate and presumed it was Biblical (especially as he doubles up as a pastor): Zaccheus, maybe, or Zephaniah.

Turns out I should have heard of Zwangendaba. He was a famous African king who broke away from the rule of the Zulu king Shaka and (starting in the 1820s) led his people on a 20-year long migration from Swaziland to what's now Tanzania. His people were the Jere tribe.

Back on the Africa desk 10 years ago we had a Lusaka correspondent named Jere: Dickson is now Zambia's presidential spokesman.

Thursday, March 18, 2010

the colour purple

Purple is the new colour in Zimbabwe. In town today, I lose count of the purple tops I see: sequinned, strapless, spaghetti-ed. All are zhing-zhong and all are new (I know because zhing-zhong loses its bling fairly quickly).

Now that the shops are full again, it seems like everyone's shopping desperately. There are new clothes shops, restaurants (a recent Australia returnee wants to open a kids' party franchise. She's planning on matching the South African motherstore: 3 warehouses and expanding).

How do you square the shopping (most at imported prices) and the oft-repeated complaints about no money? There are a few clues in the paper: an ex-UN chemical weapons inspector who's earning 4,500 US on the side with his two butcheries, teachers in Harare demanding 20 US per child for 'compulsory' extra lessons (a class of 40 would give a tax-free monthly bonus of 800 US, pointed out one letter-writer in the government Sunday Mail paper), even the woman advertising a local church who said her beauty business and her prayers had bought her an 18-roomed mansion in Zimre Park and a Toyota Tundra.

Zimbabweans are famed for their ability to Make a Plan. They did throughout Zimbabwe's decade-long economic crisis: they're still doing it today.

Sunday, March 14, 2010

wait 'til the world cup

A lodge-owner's wife was on her own out at the lodge near Odzi, eastern Zimbabwe. Her husband was out playing bridge. There was a knock on the door late at night.

Two ZANU-PF officials were waiting. "We're having a rally," they said (Night-time rallies are called pungwes here). "We've come for our contribution."

She bristled but then thought better of retorting with sarcasm. She was on her own in the dark. She went to the pantry, pulled out a 2kg bag of sugar.

"That's not enough," the officials said. "Don't you produce coffee?"

"It's filter coffee," she told them. "Not instant. You won't like it." Most Shona rally-goers -- reluctant or otherwise -- are Daybreak drinkers. (Cardboard-packed Daybreak is a mix of instant coffee grounds and chicory)

"Give," they growled.

"You'll have to go down to the bar," she said. "Tendai'll help you."

Tendai sent the men packing. He has a brigadier-friend and is not afraid. But the next day, the lodge got a 'phone call.

"Your Tendai must be careful. Very careful," a voice said. The word on the ground is that ZANU-PF is waiting for the World Cup. They'll do nothing -- or nothing very much -- until the World Cup is over. Violence would only annoy South African President Jacob Zuma, who's anxious to get the Zimbabwe problem smoothed out of sight. But when the World Cup is finished, then -- so the whispers go -- then all hell will break loose.

mother TV

A blank TV face can reveal all sorts of things.

Back in the farm days, my father-in-law had just invested in a sewing machine to stitch together the tobacco bags. It saved a good deal of time and work so he was pleased with his purchase. It'd only been used for a day when it disappeared. The farm manager hit on a plan: he'd go to consult Mai TV (Television's mother) in the Nyanga mountains. Mai TV could recover stolen goods, so the rumour went -- without moving a step from her door. True to her name, Mai TV had a TV in her shack, a turned-off TV with a blank face. The manager explained the problem. Mai TV looked into the dark face of the TV for a while. "You'll get it back tomorrow," she said. She gave the manager strict instructions on which route to take from Nyanga to go home if they wanted to get the machine back: definitely not the way they'd come but via Rusape. The manager did as he was told. Hey presto, the next morning the machine turned up, lying on the sandy path between the workers' compound and the tobacco shed.

"That's nothing," said my father-in-law's friend, now also an ex-farmer. He called in a n'anga (witchdoctor) when some of his property went missing. He had his suspicions among his workers but couldn't pin them on anybody. The n'anga lined all the employees up by the farm security fence and asked for a chicken. A chicken was brought. "You pass the chicken along the line," he ordered. "When the chicken gets to the guilty one, it will die." The chicken was solemnly passed from worker to worker. When it got to the cook, it died in his hands. "He was the one I thought was guilty," the friend said. The n'anga appeared to have proved it.

Wednesday, March 10, 2010

how to find out if someone's been murdered

If you find a drowned body:

- get six eggs and a clean plate
- place them next to the pool where the drowning occurred
- if you can't get to the pool/river, collect water from it in a bottle and put the bottle next to the eggs
- leave the eggs
- if the death is accidental, the eggs will be unbroken when you return
- if the victim was murdered, the eggs will be smashed

with thanks to the Manica Post Feb 12 2010

typhoid

Third day without water. The whole town is affected. Thankfully we have a swimming pool. Nicely-chlorinated water is being used for just about everything: flushing the loo, bathing (we heat buckets full of the gas ring when there's no power), hair-washing, clothes-washing, washing cholera off the vegetables.

Our clothes have been washed by hand in the bath for ages now. But this week, even in the plush suburbs, maids will be bending over baths and slapping the soap-suds out. We keep a couple of centimetres of water in the bottom of the basin to wash our hands in. By the end of the day, it's grimy-grey.

The cats are thirsty: one nearly fell into the bucket this morning trying to sip a drop of chlorine. We can't waste precious drinking water on them -- who knows how long the municipality will take to fix the pipe from the Pungwe -- but milk is expensive.

My husband spends an hour or so morning and night fetching buckets of water from the pool to fill the baby bath (which we squeeze into, one by one). "If you were a good Shona wife, you'd be doing this on your own," he warns me darkly.

Oh, and typhoid's broken out in Harare's northern suburb of Mabvuku. Five dead so far and 40 infected. Mabvuku was the epicentre of the cholera epidemic in 2008: typhoid, like cholera, spreads fastest where there's poor sanitation. Not-so-happy times ahead, I fear.

Monday, March 8, 2010

but what kind of pancake, mr president?

President Robert Mugabe has been speaking about his new, improved (?) relationship with former opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai. When the pair started working together, Mr Tsvangirai barely dared accept an invitation to eat with him at Harare's plush Rainbow Towers hotel, Mr Mugabe said. He told Mr Tsvangirai: "Don't worry, eat what I eat." Mr Mugabe as beefeater: now that's a new one.

A year into a power-sharing deal, the pair meet for tea and pancakes on Monday afternoons, Mr Mugabe says. What I want to know is: what kind of pancakes? Does Mr Mugabe mean the South African ones, the small bun-size patties you spread with butter and jam? They're also known as flapjacks, which -- in English cookbooks -- are something totally different: they're made with oats and syrup. Or does His Excellency mean English pancakes, the thin frying-pan size ones you toss in the air and would probably need to eat with a knife and fork? Mr Mugabe has a secret fondness for anything redolent of the British upper classes: surely he favours English pancakes. But then South African President Jacob Zuma is a good friend, more loyal -- at least on the anti-sanctions front -- that Mr Mugabe could have dared hope. Mightn't he be supporting Proudly South African pancakes?

Friday, March 5, 2010

truth (or as near to it as you can get)

"But," he asks earnestly. "What happens when you can't say what you want to say? Take sanctions, for example."

"We have to say that we cannot get these things (car parts, electrical components, books) because of the sanctions."

I gulp. This wasn't the question I was expecting to get asked here. I'm leading a media training workshop at an NGO in a Mutare township. The group's leaders have been told the local paper would be willing to take articles they've written on their projects (saves the paper sending out a reporter). They want to know how to write better.

I've come with a few hastily-crafted flip-sheets, emphasising things like clarity, short sentences, how important it is to know the point of your article before you sit down and write it, and how to use colour. Political niceties, though: that wasn't part of my brief.

"Well," I say. "Maybe in countries like Zimbabwe, there are things you can't say. But you can still stick to your truth." Truth, after all, is what we're all striving for: unless you write for the state, of course -- and that's who these poor guys will be selling to.

Another participant jumps in: "We can say there is no foreign currency to buy these things."

"Exactly. And you leave it at that." You hope you get intelligent readers (which, in a country with the second highest literacy rate in Africa, should be possible) who fill in the gaps themselves.

Tuesday, March 2, 2010

misunderstanding

"Mai S --," she says. I stop in my tracks with dread. I know what is coming: my housekeeper wants more money. As do all the state utilities, my son's school, the council...

"Am I not working nicely for you?" she says. "I am working since end of 2005 for you, is it not true?"

"Yes," I say. She never steals, which most madams would count a huge plus. But it's more than that: I know she makes my life easy.

She takes a breath. "It's just...You give me no present and Mr B: he gives Ruth candles and mealie-meal. If he does not have time to go to shops, he gives Ruth and Farai some dollars extra. Every month."

Mr B is a top local official. He has -- or had -- a farm and a plot (not two farms, lest any man should wonder), a chicken-packing business, several houses and a generous millionaire (yes, really) brother in South Africa (who comes complete with 'plane)

"Mr B has more money than we do," I say. "We don't have much at the moment. That's why we couldn't have Tommy (the gardener) work for us any more, remember?"

"It's not a problem," she says (what, really?). "It's just I need to know if I am working nicely. The money is not a problem, Mai Sammy. It is not a problem."

Suddenly I realise just how wrong I was. She isn't actually asking for a raise (though I'm sure one would come in handy): she wants the simple satisfaction of knowing I like her, and like the job she does for me.

no pants on fridays

Officials in Zimbabwe have recently located a no-pants-on-Fridays sect.

The church is in the Mazowe district in central Zimbabwe. Members aren't bound by some of the traditional rules governing apostolic sects here: they're allowed to eat pork, they can smoke and drink and they don't have to wear white 'shepherd' robes.

They have a few curious practices, though. They believe their founder -- Emmanuel Mudiwya -- who died in 1989 was Jesus Christ; they embalm their dead, and male members aren't allowed to wear underwear from Thursday night to Friday night.

"They are a bit on the scary side, to be honest and we usually keep our distance from them," said a teacher from a school near the sect's farm.

Tuesday, February 16, 2010

plantpots

"The police raided the place three or four times," says a B-and-B owner in the eastern city of Mutare. "They never found a thing."

She had diamond dealers staying with her at the height of the rush in 2008.

"The police looked in all the obvious places: toilet cistern, under the mattress. They turned the place upside down."

Two or three hours after the police had gone, the dealers' colleagues (shamwaris, she calls them, friends in the local Shona language) would knock at the door.

"We've just come to pick up something," they'd say.

She watched. The dealers went straight to the plant pots outside the B and B rooms -- the sort every white Zimbabwean keeps, with geraniums and pansies and roses in -- and began to dig with their hands. The diamonds had been hidden in the soil.

"Of course, if they were staying at number 22, they'd hide the stones in the pots outside number 24. Just to be on the safe side. But the police never guessed," she says.

We wonder -- all of us gathered round the table in this plush eatery, a day after Mugabe's government announced it'll take over white-owned businesses -- if there are any diamonds still left in her flowerpots, any stones the shamwaris missed.

Who knows when we'll need them.

Thursday, February 11, 2010

party

"Are you having a party?" the cashier asks.
I'm doing an early-morning dash through TM stores. I've got 20 US to spend on sweets, crisps and cool drink for a once-a-year bash on Saturday for ten kids. My trolley's a good third full of junk food (for the only time in the year).
"Yes," I say. "My son turned six."
There are two youths behind me in the queue, waiting to pay for their sadza-and-stew packed in polystyrene boxes.
"Can we come to the party?" one of them says.
"Sorry," I laugh.
"It's because we're black," he retorts. He pulls his cheek.
"No," I say. "There are black kids coming actually."
"Can my child come then?"
"I'm sorry," I say. "My child doesn't know your child. He's inviting his friends." Shona birthday parties tend to involve the street, the neighbours and the neighbours' friends, though not in the high-income suburbs. Those Shona parties, like white-hosted parties, are invitation-only.
"I know you whites," argues the man. "It's because we're black. You don't want us."
"My child may be white but he has a Shona name," I say. It's not often I come across open animosity these days but incidents like this remind me how deep racial distrust goes, on both sides.
"So, and what does Tinashe mean?" I tell him.
The youths walk off, muttering under their breath. Later, driving home in the car, I wonder what sparked this incident off. Was it the sight of my shopping trolley, with its 20 US worth of sweets? Most probably. Dissatisfaction's gaining ground these days, with low salaries unable to keep pace with high prices. A civil servants' strike is in its third day. It may be poorly followed -- one teacher I spoke to said she couldn't strike because she was effectively being paid 'by the parents' in the form of top-up incentives -- but there's no doubting the disappointment. Legal watchdog Veritas says Zimbabweans blame the unity government: the pro-Mugabe Herald newspaper says they blame...Morgan Tsvangirai, of course

another explanation

This time to do with snakes and witches.

An 18-year old witch was arrested in the communal lands near Mutare. She confessed that she worked for her uncle, who kept a python and a spitting cobra. They travelled on the back of the python whenever they needed to, she said.

The judge -- a traditional chief -- was not amused. He said that it was because of the snakes -- especially the spitting cobra -- that there was no rain.

There may be a logical explanation to this. We killed (or rather my mother-in-law's gardener did) a spitting cobra in the garden last week. Grey, not too long: first we thought it might be a male boomslung. But then we saw the black strip under its neck. It bulged in the middle, obviously from the frog my six-year-old had also had his eye on.

What did she get out of being a witch? Apart from free transport, possibly. Actually what the girl wanted was NOT to be a witch. She was confessing because her baby boy had died. She thought witchcraft was to blame.

Monday, February 1, 2010

no rain

Forget El Nino, global warming, regional weather patterns. The reason why there's no rain in much of Zimbabwe is, locals say, because of the blood spilt in the Chiadzwa diamond fields. Up to 200 illegal panners were killed in late 2008 when police and soldiers moved into the rich seam. There have been sporadic killings ever since.

The ancestors are holding back the rain in anger, says my son's Shona teacher.

There's another explanation, according to the local Manica Post newspaper. Twenty-five members of an Apostolic sect danced naked on Zimunya Mountain. The guilty were brought to court (presumably clothed). "If you look up to the sky it is clear: there are no rains, it is because of people like you," court assessor Benny Madanhire told the group.

They said they were just taking a bath.

Monday, January 25, 2010

kariba (well, sort of)

"Things are not good," he says.

The white bakkie shot past our gate, then reversed. The passenger window opened. I recognise MDC MP P. M. and his driver (or is he a policeman? He has a fluorescent green vest). The MP is smartly dressed these days: pin-stripe suit (despite the heat), stiff white-collared shirt, tiny brass flags pinned to his lapel.

But he isn't optimistic. The just-started constitutional outreach programme is mired in controversy. Educators from civic groups -- including a sizeable contingent of war vets (leader Joseph Chinotimba was pictured getting his accreditation in the state-owned Herald last week) -- are supposed to be holding meetings with mainly rural folk to tell them about the importance of putting their own input into a new constitution. The rural folk are getting intimidated, a Nyazura farmer told me last week. And the educators are making a pretty penny from their donor-funded allowances ($70 per day when teachers get $150 per month: not surprisingly, civil servants have given a general strike notice). MPs meantime are hiring out their government vehicles for the exercise at up to $250 per day. If the exercise lasts 100 days, that'll be more than $20,000 profit.

"There are more farm invasions, the war vets are telling the people they can only have the Kariba Draft," says the MP as we stand under the fig tree. The Kariba Draft is a draft constitution hastily agreed to by all three parties to the power-sharing deal. The document -- which retains Mugabe's sweeping powers -- wasn't supposed to be set in stone. But ZANU-PF now insists it is.

The MP looks at us and sighs.

Tuesday, January 19, 2010

ongoing

"The war veterans tried to smoke them out," she says.

Eleven more white farmers are under siege in southern Matabeleland provinces, officials from the Commercial Farmers' Union (CFU) say. In the eastern Rusape area, the purge continues. This isn't about land reform, an MDC spokesman says: it's about ZANU-PF "looting and stealing," 11 months after a power-sharing deal that was supposed to bring stability -- and desperately-needed foreign investors -- back to Zimbabwe.

My son's new teacher tells me of the trauma one white family lived through last weekend.

"They were neighbours. We used to play with the Smit boys when we were little."

"They've got this a huge Italian-style mansion, three storeys high. It's stunning. The slaves (she means Italian POWs) built it during the war. It's got this system of underground passages.

"We used to tie rope round us and fix one end to the entrance so we could find our way back. Then we'd spend hours exploring. It was like Famous Five. That's until the day the floor caved in in one room."

The war veterans found the entrance to the underground passageways under the Nyazura farmhouse last Sunday. They got inside and tried to set the wooden floors alight to smoke out the family.

"The boys were roughed up," the teacher says. "Slapped around a bit."

Wednesday, January 13, 2010

itchy fingers

"I knew I was going to get a gift today," Mai D. says, clapping her hands. "I was doing my sweeping and my fingers were itching and I said: 'Someone's going to give me something.'"

It's not much: a pot of jam, a bar of chocolate saved from Christmas. But in Zimbabwe, I learnt early on, anything makes a present.

When I was married here, about 10 days after I arrived, I was solemnly presented with a single bar of bath soap.

Sunday, January 10, 2010

struggles

There are bush monitor lizards for sale in the pet shop at Golden Stairs' Nursery in Harare.

"600 US each," says the woman behind the counter. "You have to buy the tank too. It's got underfloor heating."

The monitors -- from Australia, I learn -- are like giant white chameleons with ruffled white collars. They're nosy things, sniffing at the glass walls.

"It's the latest craze in (plush Jo'burg suburb) Sandton," says the petshop owner. "The women walk round with these things round their necks."

....

"Auntie, I need to talk to you," Mai Brendan says. I look up from my laptop. I'm struggling to meet a deadline. I push out a chair for her.

"Please, if your maid doesn't come back, I need her job." She's stammering now. "Where I stay, I get paid 20 US for the month."

She works six days a week, 6.30 am till 6 at night, plus two hours on Sunday mornings.

"Yesterday I was ill and the owner said I could lie down. But then she came to find me after a few hours. And I am breathless, like this" -- she mimics a struggle for breath.

Her husband works as a gardener for the same people. Salary: 30 US. "And we have to send money to my young sister in Dangamvura. She has to eat too."

Thursday, January 7, 2010

desperate housewives

Come to church...and get your ironing done?

Ironing's a problem when the power cuts are long. You can't just not iron things: in Zimbabwe there are putze flies. They land on wet clothes on the line in the rainy season, lay egg and the eggs then burrow themselves into soft warm flesh. A few days later, you see a pimple. If you squeeze it, out comes a yellow maggot.

So, ironing oblige. Which is why some desperate housewives follow the power. Literally: they cart their ironing (and their housekeepers) to an office, a friend's house, anywhere with power to get those clothes and sheets putzed- out. One local church had a huge advantage attracting members, it seems: it allowed them to take advantage of nearly-uninterrupted power to get their ironing done.

Ticha

"Christmas box?" he says, with a leer.

Ticha -- that's the name he's given me though I have some doubts it is on his birth certificate-- is smartly dressed in a white shirt, spanking gold tie and fresh-pressed black trousers. He's talking to an equally-elegant lady by the bread stand in OK stores.

I look down at my scuffed flip-flops.

"What about MY Christmas box?" I suggest, with a half-laugh. I am suspicious of Ticha. He seems to be everywhere I go.

The first time I met him was in the Tel-One banking hall. He appeared to be a minor clerk, simply receiving payments and logging them, not working in the Fat Cats' offices upstairs.

But somehow Ticha was living in one of the town's best suburbs. I bumped into him several times on my evening walks.

He left and went to work for ZIMRA, the state tax authority, he told me.

I bumped into him again outside the Mutare Magistrate's Court, when Roy Bennett appeared there last year. He was standing just inside the gate, talking to the police officers.

"Aha, so you follow what is happening in our country?" he said. I mumbled something about a family friend, a son of Bennett. "I did not know Bennett had a son," Ticha said (was it my imagination or was he watching me closely?). "What is his name?" He told me I should call him with news of the court ruling. I didn't.

Years ago, the now-disgraced Roman Catholic archbishop Pius Ncube said 1 in 4 Zimbabweans worked for the CIO. They needed to, to supplement meagre salaries, to get hold of hard-to-get food.

I met Ticha again yesterday as I stumbled out of Spar, laden with plastic bags. "You are doing your shopping?" he said. Was he calculating the value of my groceries, I wondered.

The paranoia that ruled our lives for nearly a decade here still isn't gone.