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)
Sunday, June 13, 2010
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.
"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.
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.
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."
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.
"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.
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.
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