"Did you see what's happening in Tunisia?" he says. As in so many middle-class Shona homes, they have the widest flat-screen available plus the latest (purple) cellphones. The furniture is comfortably dingy in this 60-something lecturer's home. There are water patches on the ceiling. I have similar ones at my place.
"I was up on the roof trying to fix the leaks with wood," he says, shaking his head. Years ago, there would have been workmen to call in. Now we do our own DIY. "She (my wife) was inside, banging on the ceiling with a broom where the patches were."
Sky TV has rolling pictures of the Tunisian crisis. From my armchair, I can see tanks, wide white streets, people rioting. Outside are the green hills of Zimbabwe's east. The president was in town just last month for his ZANU-PF party's annual conference, vowing to defeat "illegal Western sanctions." Mugabe has been in power in Zimbabwe 30 years, seven longer than Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, the Tunisian leader. Both have glamourous, hated wives.
"Now the protesters are saying they want all the ruling party to go," says his wife, a teacher.
"But where's the continuity? It might be worse than before." She shakes her head. I'm struck, once again, by the great gulf between my Western reading of a situation and a local -- and most definitely pro-opposition -- one.
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
Ngaa and the hamster
Ngaa screams when he sees the hamster.
My son misunderstands, tries to put the scrabbling thing on the child's leg. Which only leads to more terror. Sid is two months old, a grey teddy-bear hamster. It's a measure of the improvement in Zimbabwe's economic situation that you can buy teddy-bear hamsters (and toy remote-controlled helicopters and Greek yoghurt and imported Vanish soap powder) in this small eastern border city. There was a time -- was it really just two years ago? -- when the shop shelves were filled with nothing but lone loo-rolls.
Ngaa, 3, writhes in my arms. "He doesn't like it," sister Fadzie says. She's not that enamoured either, but is sufficiently used to Auntie and her family's strange white foibles to remain quiet.
"It was a culture clash," I explain later to Mai C. "I don't think Shona kids have hamsters." (Strictly speaking, that's not true. The posh woman who owns the baby shop and imports Twister wax crayons told me at great length about her 6 year-old son's hamster last month).
"No - " Mai C laughs (and she's the one who read Famous Five to her boys).
"If we see a mouse in the house, we will get a broom to kill it. Just the thought of touching it -"
She shudders.
Monday, January 10, 2011
bully by name
"What a coincidence," my mother-in-law laughs. But I think I detect unease in her voice.
We've just pointed out to her that the bullying protagonist in the Costa Children's Award-winning Out of Shadows is called Ivan Hascott. His name is one syllable different to my brother-in-law's, my mother-in-law's second child.
Reports say author Jason Wallace attended the same boarding school at the same time as my brother-in-law: Peterhouse, in Marondera, Zimbabwe. Wallace -- who set his story in a post-independence Zimbabwean boarding school -- looks to have been a couple of years younger than my brother-in-law.
Who was a well-known bully.
Often, when I reveal my married name in a social gathering, someone will come up to me and ask hesitantly: "You're not related to --" and I steel myself. Some former schoolmates laugh when they recount his exploits. But we've met at least two men aged around 40 who I'd say were still psychologically scarred.
His parents knew little about his bullying: how would you, when you saw your child only in the holidays and at the most twice a term? Boarding school is a big thing here, something I find -- with my English day Grammar School background -- totally foreign. As I write, a friend's just dropped off her seven-year old for the first time. ("Not a tear shed by any of us," she texts me).
Bullying was and is a problem. An 80-something friend of ours remembers when she had to take her son out of a school because a classmate died in a bullying incident (he was locked into a tin trunk). In one of the worst cases a couple of months ago, a 19-year-old prefect was arrested for sodomising 10 younger boys in their dormitory (actually, he wasn't arrested straight away: they let him sit his exams).
My brother-in-law was, I think, pretty scarred himself at the time, as many white and black kids were in the early 1980s. He'd had an absent father for much of the previous decade (my father-in-law had to perform six-week blocks of military service, so he'd spend six weeks at home and six weeks away in the bush, and the family never knew whether he'd come back). The three brothers returned to school after independence to find other whites overnight had either fled the country or yanked their kids out of now racially-integrated local government schools. Rightly or wrongly, my parents-in-law followed suit, scrabbling around to mop up the remaining places in exclusive boarding schools. Each child ended up in a different school.
That's not to excuse what happened, but it may go someway towards explaining it.
"Who'd have thought our sweet little darling was getting up to all that?" my mother-in-law tinkles. She is, as always, nothing but brave.
We've just pointed out to her that the bullying protagonist in the Costa Children's Award-winning Out of Shadows is called Ivan Hascott. His name is one syllable different to my brother-in-law's, my mother-in-law's second child.
Reports say author Jason Wallace attended the same boarding school at the same time as my brother-in-law: Peterhouse, in Marondera, Zimbabwe. Wallace -- who set his story in a post-independence Zimbabwean boarding school -- looks to have been a couple of years younger than my brother-in-law.
Who was a well-known bully.
Often, when I reveal my married name in a social gathering, someone will come up to me and ask hesitantly: "You're not related to --" and I steel myself. Some former schoolmates laugh when they recount his exploits. But we've met at least two men aged around 40 who I'd say were still psychologically scarred.
His parents knew little about his bullying: how would you, when you saw your child only in the holidays and at the most twice a term? Boarding school is a big thing here, something I find -- with my English day Grammar School background -- totally foreign. As I write, a friend's just dropped off her seven-year old for the first time. ("Not a tear shed by any of us," she texts me).
Bullying was and is a problem. An 80-something friend of ours remembers when she had to take her son out of a school because a classmate died in a bullying incident (he was locked into a tin trunk). In one of the worst cases a couple of months ago, a 19-year-old prefect was arrested for sodomising 10 younger boys in their dormitory (actually, he wasn't arrested straight away: they let him sit his exams).
My brother-in-law was, I think, pretty scarred himself at the time, as many white and black kids were in the early 1980s. He'd had an absent father for much of the previous decade (my father-in-law had to perform six-week blocks of military service, so he'd spend six weeks at home and six weeks away in the bush, and the family never knew whether he'd come back). The three brothers returned to school after independence to find other whites overnight had either fled the country or yanked their kids out of now racially-integrated local government schools. Rightly or wrongly, my parents-in-law followed suit, scrabbling around to mop up the remaining places in exclusive boarding schools. Each child ended up in a different school.
That's not to excuse what happened, but it may go someway towards explaining it.
"Who'd have thought our sweet little darling was getting up to all that?" my mother-in-law tinkles. She is, as always, nothing but brave.
Friday, January 7, 2011
not the marrying kind
"Talking about not being married --" he says. "I've got a story to tell you."
We're sitting on our oil-lamp lit verandah, crickets chirping in the blackness. He is a Zimbabwean academic, now living in the diaspora. He's come back for the Christmas holidays to visit his frail mother, 83, who -- all credit to her -- is just finishing her third book.
"I've got this colleague" -- he says. The colleague's interested in things military. When our friend sees a pair of rusted small cannon sitting in the long grass outside an apparently deserted storeroom he pulls out his camera.
A few minutes later a soldier taps him on the shoulder. "My boss would like to see you."
A six-hour ordeal begins. He's taken to the police station, then to the back offices. Why did he take a picture? How did he know that building he photographed was a disused barracks? (He didn't. My husband did. He can remember being taken there in the back of the family station wagon during the war days when his parents dined in the officers' mess. There was a waiter -- Goodson, was it? or Warrior? -- who brought cold drinks out to the boys in the night) How do the CIO (because it's CIO interviewing him now) know he wasn't trying to make a map? A map to be used for espionage purposes?
They confiscate the camera, want a print-out of the photos. Just one problem: the police (of course) have no printer. So officers accompany our friend to the market square where the outdoor photographers roam, cameras in hand. Yes, one of them can print out what the police need. The photographer disappears with the precious memory card. He returns later with the photos. It's only when the police examine the prints that they realise these are not the right ones . A Shona couple beam, resplendent in wedding attire, at the officers from Kodak paper.
We sip our coffee.
"You forget there are eyes everywhere," I murmur. I wonder again about that white car that I've seen parked outside our drive the last few nights, lights off. Roadside lovers? Probably. But in Zimbabwe, the fear is never far. The car is there tonight.
"But what I wanted to say -- " He's remarkably calm about this. That's even though the military police called at his mother's cottage earlier in the day "for fellowship purposes. To check you are alright" (ie where you said you'd be and not reporting to your colonial masters) -- "The reason why it took so long with those eight people questioning me, is that they couldn't believe I wasn't married."
He's in his 50s, our friend, a steady girlfriend (plus cat) waiting for him back home.
.
"What, not married? But why?" they kept saying. "No children?" It's unthinkable, a disgrace, for a Shona male to die childless. In the past, you could be buried with a rat on your back if you had no kids.
"What about children outside?" the CIO persisted. "Ok, so not inside marriage, but outside then?"
We're sitting on our oil-lamp lit verandah, crickets chirping in the blackness. He is a Zimbabwean academic, now living in the diaspora. He's come back for the Christmas holidays to visit his frail mother, 83, who -- all credit to her -- is just finishing her third book.
"I've got this colleague" -- he says. The colleague's interested in things military. When our friend sees a pair of rusted small cannon sitting in the long grass outside an apparently deserted storeroom he pulls out his camera.
A few minutes later a soldier taps him on the shoulder. "My boss would like to see you."
A six-hour ordeal begins. He's taken to the police station, then to the back offices. Why did he take a picture? How did he know that building he photographed was a disused barracks? (He didn't. My husband did. He can remember being taken there in the back of the family station wagon during the war days when his parents dined in the officers' mess. There was a waiter -- Goodson, was it? or Warrior? -- who brought cold drinks out to the boys in the night) How do the CIO (because it's CIO interviewing him now) know he wasn't trying to make a map? A map to be used for espionage purposes?
They confiscate the camera, want a print-out of the photos. Just one problem: the police (of course) have no printer. So officers accompany our friend to the market square where the outdoor photographers roam, cameras in hand. Yes, one of them can print out what the police need. The photographer disappears with the precious memory card. He returns later with the photos. It's only when the police examine the prints that they realise these are not the right ones . A Shona couple beam, resplendent in wedding attire, at the officers from Kodak paper.
We sip our coffee.
"You forget there are eyes everywhere," I murmur. I wonder again about that white car that I've seen parked outside our drive the last few nights, lights off. Roadside lovers? Probably. But in Zimbabwe, the fear is never far. The car is there tonight.
"But what I wanted to say -- " He's remarkably calm about this. That's even though the military police called at his mother's cottage earlier in the day "for fellowship purposes. To check you are alright" (ie where you said you'd be and not reporting to your colonial masters) -- "The reason why it took so long with those eight people questioning me, is that they couldn't believe I wasn't married."
He's in his 50s, our friend, a steady girlfriend (plus cat) waiting for him back home.
.
"What, not married? But why?" they kept saying. "No children?" It's unthinkable, a disgrace, for a Shona male to die childless. In the past, you could be buried with a rat on your back if you had no kids.
"What about children outside?" the CIO persisted. "Ok, so not inside marriage, but outside then?"
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?
"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."
"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."
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."
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