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."
Thursday, July 22, 2010
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?"
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."
"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?
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."
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.
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.
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