The Wisteria Lane Frontier

At the intersection of Sandton Drive and William Nicol last night was a man displaying a handwritten cardboard sign, not an unusual mode of begging here, except that this one said something along the lines of: ‘My donkey ate Robert Mugabe’s chicken soup and now I’m in trouble so please help me out’. If he’d been anywhere near my car, he certainly would have won a donation for creativity, though I’m ever so curious to know about the inspiration for the sign. There are plenty of Zimbabweans about, and many of them very bitter about what’s happened…but I won’t go into that just yet.

I forget that it’s October and that October means hot in southern Africa. It’s been pretty hot during the daytimes, with enormous cloud formations building up in the late afternoon. The mauve jacarandas are coming out in full bloom, and the mornings and evenings on the Wisteria Lane Frontier are filled with the raucous cries of a bird whose name I can’t remember… but basically they sound like something out of the Jurassic period.

The Wisteria Lane Frontier is what I’ve renamed my little part of Lonehill. It is affluent, artificial, high-walled, and filled with mostly whites and young professionals of all races. There is nothing organic or unplanned about its geography or architecture at all. The only redeeming factor, as I’ve mentioned before, is the view over the undulating landscape of the northern frontier of the city. The Lonehill kopje reminds me a lot of Zim. The colours in the early mornings and late afternoons are just beautiful, and as long as I don’t look too close to where I stand (!), then I have a strong sense of being in an African landscape, which you wouldn’t find in other parts of the city. There’s also loads of space in my apartment, which feels like heaven after London. It’s theoretically one of the safest parts of Jo’burg, but even so, on Friday night I heard my first gunshots in the distance, closely followed by a barrage of police sirens. Anyway, I’ll be on the Wisteria Lane Frontier for a few months and then re-assess the situation. It's not all bad...just takes some getting used to!

I am now the not-so-proud owner of a car. I slightly resent having to spend my hard- earned savings on a car which, to the frustration of some of my male friends, I see as nothing more than functional. I also feel like a sell-out on the environmental front. I have been commuting across town quite a bit for social stuff. Excluding the time taken when I get lost, which is often, it’s about thirty minutes for me to travel to the older part of the city (Parkhurst/Melrose/Rosebank/Saxonwold). I cannot believe that the government here has not been more interventionist or top-down in terms of vehicle usage and traffic congestion. In the mornings the highways are crammed with 1-person-per-car. Maybe someone can explain to me how it got this bad. In order for my journey to work to take seven minutes, I either have to leave at 6.15am or 8.45am…otherwise it can easily take 45 minutes. Can’t wait to get a bicycle. In the meanwhile I seriously need to work on my parking skills.

I went to the Bryanston Organic Market on Saturday morning. Like other parts of this part of Jo’burg, very little about the market felt spontaneous. With the well-heeled clientele, it felt a bit like Kings Road in Chelsea, minus the high street brand names. Nevertheless, there were a few interesting characters around, including a seventy-something French-speaking Portuguese beekeeper and honey purveyor who read my palm and flirted outrageously. And a South African potter t who told me about the floods of Zimbabweans trying to get a job at his studio. And then there was the gluten-and-lactose-free stall (*obviously*, it’s the Joburg equivalent of Chelsea) with the man who proudly told me he also sold bottled water imported from Italy. I didn’t hold back on giving him a piece of my mind about that.

Saturday also included a visit to some second-hand furniture shops on Bram Fischer in Randburg. That was much more real and much more interesting. People were bemused by a white girl wearing an African-java-print skirt (as they probably were at the organic market) and did a few double-takes. I didn’t have much luck on the furniture front, but I did come away with contact details for a dressmaker, some hilarious LP covers from the ‘70s, and a plan to buy an antique milk pail.

I think I have a navigation curse on me, which is unfortunate, given that even to start with, I seem to be missing the DNA for geographic orientation. My TomTom GPS thingy keeps seizing up on me at the wrong times. And I still haven’t bought myself a map book which is silly. The biggest drama was on Wednesday morning when I ended up having to take friends to the airport for their London flight because the taxi didn’t arrive on time. We got stuck in hideous traffic, but we made it in good time in the end. Then on leaving the airport I managed to take a wrong turning and ended up going into Bedfordview and then all the way south, via Yeoville and Houghton on my way back to Bryanston. For those who don’t know Jo’burg, that would be like going from Canary Wharf to Marble Arch via Kew Gardens. Except that the Kew Gardens wouldn’t be Kew Gardens, it would be more like a dodgy part of Brixton. Yeah, so I was in the car for FOUR HOURS that morning, and not a happy bunny.

What else? I finally have some crockery and cutlery, two folding chairs and, as of today, a coffee table bought on Gumtree. The sellers delivered it to me, and extended an invitation to be my surrogate parents if I ever needed any support. So cute – and only in southern Africa! It feels like it’s going to take forever to furnish my place but I guess I just need to stop being so impatient, and instead be grateful (and sometimes amused) to be in a place where people are so open, friendly, and casual-familiar. Did I mention the mattress man, who I’ve only spoken to once or twice over the phone? “Oh yah hi Jules…oh yes your mattress. You know what, Jules, it won’t be delivered today. No yah, sorry Jules. Nothing I can do, my angel, nothing I can do. Ok angel….Take care.”

Oh Egoli: First Week in Johannesburg

It’s the end of my first week in Jo’burg, and I am struck by this contented sense of relief to be back in southern Africa. The size of the city and all its highways are a tad intimidating, but my relocation agent has been drumming the geography into me consistently since day one, so I pretty much know where most suburbs are now. Everyone has been incredibly helpful and welcoming here, ranging from the kitchen lady at the office (who gave me an enormous bear hug the day I arrived) to relatives and friends of friends, and, less surprisingly, the car salesman. I’m staying with an ex-Oxford friend in Sandton in a modest complex with a lovely big garden. It’s sunny, the air is filled with blossom scent, and there are lots of birds – shrikes, parrots, robins, babblers, barbets, wood hoopoes, and more.

I’ve seen loads of accommodation options, and think I probably perplexed the Google-assigned property agent with my non-corporate leanings. Despite my wannabe-Bohemian tendencies, in the end it came down to the convenience and proximity of Lonehill up in the north near the office, albeit with its artificial ‘Wisteria Lane kitsch’ feel versus the older and more atmospheric Parkhurst with its streetside restaurants and cafes, which are quite unusual for Jo’burg and its shopping mall culture. I’ve opted for Lonehill in the short term, for the loft space and the upstairs terrace view, which will be awesome after the claustrophobia of London. Let’s see how it goes. My neighbours probably wouldn’t appreciate chickens and a beehive, but I should be able to do veggies and a solar oven on the terrace at least! I am looking forward to my crate arriving so that I can start decorating.

There’s been a lot of admin alongside just staying on top of the day job, but I have been out and about one or twice. Last weekend I spent Sunday afternoon on Freedom Square in Soweto, with a political analyst friend, listening to new candidates for the Constitutional Court being interviewed by the Judicial Services Committee. It was fascinating, and all the 'heavies' were there, including the Chief Justice, the Justice Minister, MP Patricia de Lille, and more. Although it was open to the public, there were surprisingly few people watching (40-50) and apparently virtually no security at all. I was struck by the relative informality of it. I was also struck by how the questioning was still weighed down by race -- I would have expected that ten years ago, but curious to find it still so prevalent.

This weekend I went out with friends in mixed and cosmopolitan Melville. It turned out to be a really entertaining evening, including a brief bar encounter with a group who only spoke sign language. The evening concluded with driving to a club up north with some buff Nigerians, with the Jai Ho soundtrack blaring loud and on repeat. Unexpected yet fun. The latest good news is that I'm finally going solo to and from work, in a hired car. I only know two routes... but, as I like to say, a girl's gotta grow up sooner or later.

Departing the Metropole

After almost exactly a decade based in England, I have decided to return to southern Africa. Packing up is a pretty momentous time, and a chance to reflect on what has passed, or at least some of it. I sift through papers, find fragments of notes taken during my Zimbabwe travels -- fragments of chaos and desperation. I find photographs of my other world in Namibia, a Khwe woman weaving in the late afternoon shade of Mashambo, and satellite images of Caprivi and the ever-stretching sandveld. I find frantic to-do lists from the office -- yet again an other world, one of ambition and self-betterment and money. Cards from my mother on the southern oceans. A ribbon from Liz, 10 years ago in India just before we left, now fallen behind a bookshelf and retrieved, covered in dust. I have been using it to tie one of my scrapbooks. This time I tuck it into my hand luggage, because I can't bring myself to let it go. The "Cash Caviar and Champagne" dress is dug up from underneath the bed, no doubt ready for its Jozi debut.

I paste things rather frantically into my scrapbooks. It's hard to slow down. I vacuum, and again. I gather all my fieldnotes, those special and wordy rite-de-passage collections, and add them to the 'special box' pile, which includes photographs, my childhood stamp collection (yup, don’t laugh), my diaries. All my files from university are going too, including my first year anthro lecture notes, carefully dictated in green and purple ink. It’s debatable whether I should really be taking those, admittedly. My cello is de-bridged and de-sound-posted. We pack him up carefully and then into a coffin-like crate which is loaded into a cavernous van during an uncharacteristically heavy downpour. It’s really happening, this move.

I retrace the steps of my last day or two in London. Alice helps me clean the flat, vacuuming in her pencil skirt and heels. Even that she manages to do stylishly. I finally meet the proprietor of the coffee shop downstairs. I think he's Jamaican. I ask him for a bin bag, as I've run out. He gives me two, saying I might need more. I go to the gym on my final morning, and sit on the bike listening to Kaleen’s old playlists. God, I will be relieved not to go back to those gyms in the winter. I go to the British Library to renew my card. I’m not sure why. I suppose I have a small hope that I’ll want to come and absorb and reflect on knowledge again sometime. I remind some girl that she can’t go into the reading rooms carrying a cup of coffee, which she seems to find surprising, and then I go for bhel puri at the Indian restaurant on Drummond St where Ed and I used to eat.

Mary comes to pick me up. I heave those heavy cumbersome bags into her car and off we go to Heathrow. I tell her about Mishek's death last week, and how I had hoped one day we would sit together round the fire in Murehwa -- where I've never been because of my skin colour -- free of fear and the dark shadows of the past, him an old man, and me still listening. She tells me about one of her African clients who has been beaten in detention in the UK. I dispatch several copies of Chikwava’s ‘Harare North’ to friends. At the airport I am ever so tired. There is endless possibility now, and I don't know where to begin.

Passage to India, July 2009

In July I returned to India for the first time in five years, and spent a week travelling before our much-awaited college reunion. I left London in a frazzled but expectant state and flew into Delhi, where we spent a surreal and humid day exploring the Red Fort, the million winding alleys of Chandi Chowk market, the sparkling new metro, and reacquainting our senses with India. We caught a night train that evening, with the Delhi station bringing back so many memories.

The Kalka Mail train which starts in Calcutta/Kolkata laid on an easy, hassle-free journey in 2nd class AC to Kalka, where we arrived at about 4.30am and drank steaming sweet chai in clay cups on the station platform. Then onto the ‘toy train’ up into the hills of Shimla, on the old British narrow gauge railway that was built in 1903. It was the loveliest of journeys, with stops at tiny and beautifully maintained stations along the way. Shimla was definitely worth the visit -- forested and full of colonial administrative buildings, most of which are delapidated and decaying, but rich with history and character.

We took a room at Hotel Classic, with a view overlooking the former Annandale racecourse and polo field. It's now used as a helipad by the army. The next few days were spent exploring Shimla by foot, eating dosas and pao bhaji, and admiring the unexpected gardening and potplanting skills of the locals. The highlight was undoubtedly the Viceroy Lodge, an extraordinary Oxbridgesque mansion decked out in teak and walnut, which used to have 800 staff, and where some of the penultimate decisions about India’s tumultuous Partition with Pakistan were made.

From Shimla we hired a jeep and driver to travel up to McLeod Ganj via Mandi, Palampur and Chamunda Devi. With several monsoon downpours along the way, winding mountain roads with heavy traffic, and a few stops for food and temples, the journey of about 250km took us 11 hours. India amazes me with how productive everyone is. People are always busy doing something: worshipping, travelling to worship, building roads, building bridges, trading food, working the rice paddies, carrying wood. Just everywhere you look from the road, people are busy with activities. It always just strikes me as a lot busier than Africa somehow! Though maybe it's just to do with population density.

Our arrival in steamy McLeod Ganj, which has one of the highest monsoon rainfalls in the country, coincided with an enormous traffic jam in the tiny central crossroads. Eventually we found our way to the Tibetan-run Pema Thang Guest House, which was full of foreigners. Dharamsala and McLeod Ganj are the seat of the Dalai Lama in exile. McCleod Ganj proved to be a fascinating if not bizarre community of Tibetan refugees, pilgrims of all religions including Buddhism, do-good Westerners, Indians cashing in on the economic opportunities, and all sorts of alternative hangouts. For the most part, the town was submerged in cloud and monsoon haze but one early morning after a restless and mosquito-filled night, a little sun opened up new parts of the valley, lighting up some distant cliffs and mountains that I hadn't noticed before. The views must be wonderful on clear days.

We pottered in and around McCleod Ganj for a few days, exploring the temples, the nearby monasteries, the museum with its very firm Tibetan versions of history, the hippy cafes, and feasting on the most delicious malai kofta on the rooftop restaurant of Hotel Kareri. I learned my first about Buddhism and the Free Tibet cause, now somewhat passé in the west, I think, and also found a great Japanese masseuse who lived in a building for the political prisoners' association. The stairwell was full of framed, very graphic depictions of Chinese torture of Tibetans. Pretty horrific stuff.

We flew out of Dharamsala on a 30-seater plane which had been grounded overnight for repairs (!), so we took a deep breath and crossed our fingers. It was amazing to see monsoon India underwing - vast rivers and settlement and cultivation as far as the eye can see. From Delhi we took a taxi to the traveler section, Paharganj, and whilst on the main highway into town, in the rush hour traffic, someone that we'd met on the Kalka-Shimla train pulled up next to us. To re-meet a random acqutaintance in a country of over a billion people felt pretty surreal, it has to be said! And then into the guts of Paharganj - possibly one of the most intense traffic experiences I've had in India. Narrow streets with a huge amount of activity - motorbikes, cyclists, load-pulling wallahs, rickshaws, cars, taxis, pedestrians, all going in different directions. And everyone trying to make it work, squeezing through the gaps, with horns and noise and cows and dirt and everything else. We were kind of lost and our driver tried to do a u-turn to find the hotel, and knocked over a motorcyclist in the process, who then came round and slapped him across the face. Despite my fears about a big fight breaking out, in the thick of this crowded craziness, their conflict resolution was swift. So unlike the completely unnecessary road rage that one sees regularly in Britain. And what was also interesting was that afterwards, at least 2 people helped our driver reverse out the muddle. Again, everyone seemed willing to make the chaos functional. India works. We finally found the comically-named Major's Den before heading out for some market shopping and food at a particularly grubby traveller cafe.

From there we went down to Mumbai, this time on the Rajdhani Express. India’s trains never fails to impress, and my admiration for the railways is endless. The service was excellent and the food was better than British Airways. We took ourselves on the local train to Bhandra to find Anokhi's new apartment, where Maura had also just arrived. After I had a facial in a men’s-only salon by mistake, and after stuffing ourselves on dosa at the corner restaurant, we sandwiched the ourselves and our luggage into a car and headed for the monsoon hills of Pune and the college.

Being back on the hill was like going home, surrounded by people who care and count, and by the warbling-gurgling birds. We talked and danced the nights away, and absorbed the lush greenness during the day. It’s so easy to forget the oppression of the hot months during the rains. We walked up to the high ridge overlooking Mulshi. It was splendid: emerald-wet, dotted with ancient shrines, and valleys dipping and dropping in all directions. It was India as I recall it from my very first days there in '97. The mists rolling in and out, the camaraderie of the group, and a sense of space that makes me feel whole. Before I left I also climbed the other hill, the one on the Paud side, to look across those valleys in some wonder, my eyes falling on new detail every minute, the light rising and subsiding, pushing its way through monsoon clouds, falling on the hamlets, and the temples with their triangular rooves that have sprung up all over. It's a view I have missed.

There’s not much else to say besides that it was a very special few days, and for the first time in ages I felt my restlessness subside. Afterwards a good number of us went to Pune for a few days. Pune is as busy as I recall, but its new geographies pass me by somewhat. I realise now with some surprise that I never looked at a map of Pune whilst I lived in India. We never had that much time to explore, I guess. I am still somewhat blind to the layout of the city. There are new developments, expansion and roads.

We stayed just down the street from the German Bakery, that old hippie-international haunt, ate enormous paper dosas at Madhubahn and bhel puri outside some new cinema complex somewhere, and drank cold coffee with the dwarf proprietor at Coffee House. Pune is changing, but in many ways it was all as it should be. Thank you India.

When Nowhere is a Country, or, Ten Years in the Postcolony

Over eighteen months in London and more than ten years away from Zimbabwe, and I've been wanting to write for some time now on identity and the postcolony. Is Britain a postcolony - in the sense that it is a melting pot for dilemmas and debates around history and identity in the wake of colonialism? Google doesn’t help on that particular search query. Yes and no. I guess I've always felt very postcolonial being here, even before displacement started permeating the lives of so many Zimbabweans. I recall my anger during my first few years in England, about the ignorance that I experienced among many Britons about colonialism's legacy. This reinforced the sense of a nation which had unravelled and re-made other people's histories and then conveniently erased that from its collective memory. There's this disjuncture between Britain being such a reflective and dialogical society (what with its vibrant media scene, all those institutionalised radio programmes, all its debates) and its own sense of being at the centre of the universe where, as a friend put it recently, things are simply "what they seem". This has always bugged me, alongside the damp predictability*, tidy little hedged fields and 'myriad small cramped lives'**. It’s simply all too orderly - and that orderliness is an unsettling reminder of how the past has been tidied over.

This of course resonates with the society in which I grew up. Maybe that’s why it makes me so mad. Every place has its own illusions and silences. I grew up without history; I didn't learn any Zimbabwean history until I left the country, aged sixteen. The scars were still too fresh, I suppose, and I think children just knew somehow that one shouldn't linger on the topic. And so instead the teachers at my private school fed us ancient Egypt and the World Wars instead. Earlier this year I watched the Gaza demonstrators walking down Edgware Road, and was struck by this image (not an original one, by any means) of London as many nations, many exiles, many postcolonials. Negotiating our identities and our relationship with capitalism. I'm reminded of the patchwork of exiles I've met here - like the Indian Ugandan woman who I met at a school community fair that I stumbled across in Marylebone. She was expelled under Idi Amin, and made these delicious samosas, incidentally. And of another in-between friend whose academic parents were banned by the Apartheid government. And of the Zimbabweans anxiously waiting for their destinies to be determined in the bureaucratic bowels of the Home Office.

Meanwhile back on the ranch, each time a new British historical drama is released with generous doses of all the usual staples - class tensions, a nostalgic romance with the countryside, homoeroticism, and preferably Keira Knightley [Atonement; The Empress; The Young Victoria; and by the way, just how many times will they remake Pride and Prejudice?] - I wonder if it's some kind of backlash against the contemporary 'multiculturalism' that Britain prides itself on. Indeed, back to London and all its oddities: the Moroccans downstairs who I barely know, but who gave me a bottle of vintage Veuve Clicquot for my birthday; the women in full burqas wandering around Hyde Park; the anorexic girl who waits at the gym door ahead of opening time on weekend mornings; the pair of working class artists in Greenwich market who paint about how they detest New Labour...and all these strange yellow spring flowers and accompanying birdsong which reminds me for the most part of undergraduate exams and how this remains a foreign land.

*Luhrmann
**Lessing, The Golden Notebook

Zimbabwe February 2009

It's late evening in the Jo'burg guesthouse grandiosely named Silverwood Manor, but which is actually more of a Fawlty Towers variety ("Oh, did I really omit to mention when you booked that we're undergoing construction for another 60 beds?  And that that our entire staff will sit with you around the 6-seater dining room table at breakfast in the morning, simply because there isn't any other space for them to be and, in fact, given that we don't have any guests there's actually not a lot of work for them to do?").  

But this post is supposed to be about the country to the north.  One wonders what more can be written about Zimbabwe that hasn't already been said, yet each time home as an insider-outsider is a new experience.  Harare is shabby and dilapidated but beautiful with its tall skies, lush green streets, potholes, and the engulfing downpours that I call proper rain.  The atmosphere felt considerably lighter than when I was last back during the post-election period in July 2008.  Certain sectors of the informal economy have mushroomed and become visible again, though others remain firmly behind closed doors.  The craft market in Newlands has re-emerged for the first time since Operation Murambatsvina in 2005, all its prolific creativity now squeezed onto a verge between the shopping centre and one of Harare's only new roads.

  

With the latest agreements around the new 'unity' government, it felt like there was a glimmer of hope in the air, though personally I think there's a lot more of the same old stuff still to come.  The reduced tension is partly because foreign currency has been legalized, and food is readily available again, although things have become incredibly expensive.  The Zim dollar seems to be officially dead, and I am returning to London with a collection of obsolete multi-billion banknotes.  The Reserve Bank appears desperate for cash, and is trying to coerce shop owners and street vendors alike to pay hefty licence fees in order to operate in foreign currency.  For a street vendor who earns maybe $50 a month, $20 would be sucked up by a licence.  For a shop owner in the northern suburbs, a licence would be more along the lines of $1000 a month, also beyond the means of many.  Whether people will comply is yet to be seen.  Phone invoices and other utility bills have suddenly arrived in US dollars, with no advance warning.  My parents' landline bill shouted out a grand $265 for January (!) - compared to something more along the lines of $15-20 in previous months.  Again, most people are doing a typically Zimbabwean 'wait and see' before taking any action, as they know that it's all likely to change again before long.

To give you an idea of just how expensive things have become, here's a sample list:

Bunch of spinach (side of the road): $0.50

Commuter taxi fare: $1.00

Tin of chopped tomatoes (TM supermarket, Kamfinsa): $1.50

Newspaper $2.00

Block of basic cheese (Green Park supermarket): $3.60

Gym class (Rolf Valley): $4.00

 2kg rice (Import depot, Msasa, see photo below): $5.10

Doctor's appointment: $30

Termly fee at a top private senior school: $1200

Caesarian baby delivery (Avenues Clinic, no water available): $4000

Garden flat/apartment in Avondale complex: $250 000 cash.

The only thing which is cheap is alcohol:  a can of beer works out at $0.60.  Prior to the US dollar being legalized, fuel coupons were being used as a currency, meaning that there is now a significant surplus of coupons on the market.  Large numbers of unemployed young men loiter around the entrance of the Redan fuel depot in Msasa, avoiding the police where necessary, in the hope of selling these off at a discount.  For those who are able to do this at scale, there is money to be made.

There is considerable wealth around, as ever.   Niche-filling entrepeneurs are reported to be raking in profits of, for example, $10 000 a month in the goods transport business.  One of my ever-informative Joburg taxi drivers told me all about a regular Zimbabwean client of his who owns a construction company amongst others, re-sells South African liquor at a 300% profit in Harare...and owns 2 Hummers.  Given that loans, bonds and mortgages don't really seem to exist, houses are paid for in cash.  I met an estate agent who'd had a client show up with $400 000 in a bag. 

Meanwhile, the vast majority of children haven't been back to school this year, except at a handful of private schools which have mobilised enough foreign currency to pay their teachers.  Even my parents' domestic worker now has his eldest child enrolled at a private school - having already paid for fees, uniforms and books at her government school, where the teachers understandably have simply not returned to work this year.  At the National Archives, the shelving for vast quantities of valuable documentation is collapsing because people have been stealing the screws which hold them together.  Crimes of all kinds seem to be a necessity for survival in Zimbabwe, but if we exclude politically-motivated violence, it's a far cry from Joburg and Cape Town.   My brother's housemate takes both back wheels off his vehicle to deter thieves when storing it at home, which I have to say caused me more hilarity than concern, especially when combined with a propped-open bonnet to prevent rats nesting in the cosy engine. 

The most striking thing for me is people's cynicism and complete lack of trust in all systems and institutions, particularly government-related, but also on the individual level.  It seems to cut across class, race and other lines of affiliation, and I wonder if and how this can be overcome.  Many people are so tired of injustice and exploitation at all levels - but at the same time have probably become exploitative themselves in order to make ends meet.  Foreign currency accounts are now apparently easy to open, as channels for funds from abroad, but there are so many stories of money transfers going 'missing', that few people seem willing to take the risk.  Their take on it is simply that the Reserve Bank is either stealing their money altogether, or borrowing it for a few weeks to pilfer the interest. 

Civil servants have found innovative ways to supplement their incomes.  A good example is a local police inspector who uses his government vehicle for all sorts of odd jobs, ranging from a taxi service to assisting wealthier residents in the northern suburbs with services like removing household garbage (which the municipality has not done for years now).  Normality and the threat of violence continue to co-exist in bizarre synchrony.  Like the one evening we sipped our South African red wine (purchased for $5 a bottle from a large stockpile in someone's home garage in Glen Lorne), while two water cannon tanks provided by the Israelis zoomed past in the direction of Chikurubi Prison.   Another afternoon we even crossed paths with Uncle Bob himself and have to pull over on Borrowdale Rd for the Presidential motorcade to pass.  It is still made up of about 12 vehicles, including 10 heavily armed men on an open truck, but this time the wailing sirens were considerably muted.  I couldn't help but get the impression that he is now slinking about his business with unease, and perhaps starting to keep a lower profile.

 

I end with a typically incongruous Zimbabwean encounter that my mother and I had with the police at a roadblock on the Domboshawa road.   A sort of considerate and genteel corruption, if you like.

Policeman:  Can I see your driver's licence.

Mum [left it at home]:  Umm, sorry, I don't have it...we're going up Domboshawa and umm, I didn't want it to fall out of my pocket whilst walking.

Policeman [pedantic]:  Do you know that before you even pick up your car keys, you should pick up your drivers licence?

Mum: Nodding

Me:  Yes, I always tell her she needs to remember her licence.  

Mum: Nodding

Policeman:  [more pedantic] And how are we going to identify you if you have an accident?

Mum: Nodding

Policeman:  Goes on with a long and apparently sincere lecture about the importance of the drivers licence.

Policeman:  So, in order to help you not to forget your licence, we are going to have to fine you.

Mum:  Umm, Ok.  How much?

Policeman:  $20 [fines used to be about $0.50, so this is quite something].

Me:  Hmm, the problem is, we don't even have $20 on us [truthful].  

Mum:  I will have to drive all the way home and then return here...and....

Me:  You see, we're going to Domboshawa and we need some of our money for the entrance fee...

Policeman: [contemplates the situation] Ok, so how much can you pay?

Me: Umm, ok, so we need about $4 for Domboshawa and we have about $14, and...[tries to do calculations and weighs up situation]..I think we can pay you $4.

Policeman:  Ok, you can fill out the book.

Me: using the old fuel drum on the side of the road as a table, filling out the 'Admission of Guilt' form with my details, even though Mum is the driver.

Policeman: pockets the mixture of dollars and rands.

Policeman:  So how old are you?

Me: I'm 28.

Policeman:  And why are you still unmarried?

Me: [measure of feminist sarcasm] Well, I'm just waiting for the right man to come along.

Policeman [assuredly]: You are being too selective.

Me:  Yes, you're probably right...

And with that classic piece of relationship advice, off we went to Domboshawa.  Just another afternoon in the postcolony. 

Zimbabwe August 2008

4th August 2008

It's a Sunday afternoon back in London, where I landed this morning, and I wanted to jot down a few more reflections on Zim before the big city sweeps me up.

 My first incongruous tale regards chocolate. Did you know that Cadbury's Zimbabwe still *exports* chocolate?  I kid you not.  It exports to Namibia, Democractic Republic of Congo…and…wait for it…Switzerland.  Yes, Cadbury's Zimbabwe is the only Cadbury in the world that makes Crunchettes – mini versions of Crunchies. It's also the only Cadbury's where Flakes are still hand-made.

My three weeks in Zim, as ever, provided so many insights.  Overheard conversations and glimpses of daily life in Harare were windows into socio-political change, trauma, resilience and humour.  People there live in a wartime economy even though the conflicts and violence are not described as war.   Since my last email, I visited TM supermarkets in Newlands and Kamfinsa; I was properly shocked by row after row of bare shelves which stocked only a handful of longlife products like soap powder, Dettol and Doom.  But in true Zimbabwean fashion, as a Joburg friend pointed out on seeing the photos that I furtively took with my phone, the shelves and floors are spotlessly clean – gleaming, even - and the staff neatly dressed and all standing behind their counters as usual.    Just afterwards, I went into a nearby art shop, where an artist was telling the proprietor how she was now exchanging paintings for fuel coupons.  Another woman was complaining bitterly about her friend's experience of immigrations officials at Heathrow:  'They asked her why she'd lived in Cape Town for 2 years. None of their bloody business!  What's she going to say?  Because the weather's better?!'  I mentioned that I'd just been into TM supermarket, and they retorted, 'Oh, didn't you know, it's not called TM anymore…it's called MT (emp-ty).'

 People's economic strategies are innovative and rich in their diversity.  I listened to urban housewives co-arranging the butchering of a mombe (cow) they'd managed to procure through someone who knows someone; the butcher was identified in a similar fashion.  These days it's all about having a wide network of contacts who fill gaps and seize opportunities in the informal market.  A friend of my brother's, formerly a world-class triathlete, currently trades diesel from Harare for kapenta fish in Binga, which he then brings back to the city.  This trip, for the first time, I saw wealthy white women stopping on corners in their 4x4s to buy a handful of vegetables from the street vendors whom they've overlooked for years.   They also look further afield, of course, and there are a number of traders who now bring in goods from South Africa and re-sell them at anything between a 10% and 90% mark-up.

In the midst of economic collapse, my second top incongruous tale involves postcolonial etiquette. The Royal Harare Golf Club, neighbouring the  presidential residence, was opened in 1898 and remains an elite hang-out, including for the political chefs. It maintains a stringent dress code.  A family friend visited the club for lunch recently in business-casual attire.  Having already ordered his meal in the Club's restaurant, he and his partner were asked to leave because he wasn't wearing socks under his long trousers.  Indeed, the dress code, in some bizarre colonial fashion, trumped all else – including the need to retain customers in one of the most desperate economies in the
world.

People still pay taxes in Harare, but are now often subsidizing state services, sometimes dramatically.  In a neighbouring northern suburb, the residents were so fed up with the chronic electricity problems that they approached ZESA to ask what could be done.  In the end, this same group gathered together USD 4000 to pay for spare parts that ZESA could not afford.  Similar stories are heard from the high density suburbs, though I imagine the amounts of money involved would have been significantly less. In the same vein, last week a friend of our domestic worker was  admitted to Parirenyatwa hospital, in the last stages of terminal breast cancer.  She was in hospital for 4 days before her death, during which time she was not given even a single painkiller.  Her relatives had to pool together to buy her a drip, in a last effort to ease her suffering.

Last weekend we traveled to Rukomechi, in the Mana Pools National Park area, a journey of about 7 hours.  Leaving the city early in the morning, I was struck by the image of 3 women in Apostolic robes, praying in the direction of the rising sun as they knelt in the white winter grass near some crossroads.  Between Harare and the Dyke, every village or homestead sported a Zanu PF poster visible from the road, tied high onto tree trunks, almost as if charms to fend off bad luck.  Driving the road through Chinhoyi and Karoi, formerly some of the most productive agricultural land in the country, we saw hundreds of acres of waist-high weeds.  Zanu PF T-shirts and headscarves were also quite a common sight in this area (in contrast to the Domboshawa side of town, where I saw not a single poster or handout).  Near Banket, ironically the only form of livelihood activity seen from the road were craftsmen selling wooden toy replicas of John Deere tractors.  Watching ZTV the same week, discussion panels informed viewers that agricultural failure was the outcome of Western sanctions (coincidentally, I nearly
fell of my chair laughing when I came across a white news presenter on ZTV – yet another one of Zimbabwe's many little incongruities).

Rukomechi, our destination on the banks of the Zambezi, with the Zambian escarpment as a backdrop, was absolutely stunning.  We and the elephants had the entire river to ourselves, minus a little noise pollution one afternoon from Rautenbach (one of Mugabe's business partners for his DRC dealings) in his black helicopter.  Bee-eaters and water birds, hippo s galore, enormous crocodiles lazing in the afternoon sun, waterbuck on the plains...and the most sublime African colours. Elsewhere in the country, illegal poaching is rife, but this part of Mana seems to have retained its character as a safe wildlife haven.

 The weekend's close brought my third most incongruous tale.  This one concerns tsetse fly control.   Some institutions never die - and it seems that the tsetse doesn't either.  The poor old tsetse fly, the carrier of sleeping sickness, has been subject to state interventions for decades and decades.  I was impressed by the tsetse fly control man who appeared to inspect our vehicle as we passed out of the National Park vicinity, equipped with a small net and a virtually-empty spray can, with which he carefully eliminated 1 of the 3 tsetse flies inside our car.  The lives of the other 2 were spared, it seems, due to unspoken spray rationing.  Like the Royal Harare club, only much more remote, I thought this little incident spoke volumes about how certain institutions survive despite massive upheavals, and how people still carry out their jobs as best they can under adverse conditions.

On our return to Harare, we heard that Zanu PF was distributing free food to its supporters, a few blocks away from home.  My dad and I went for a drive to check it out – and yes, there it was:  a rally taking place in the grounds of a nearby primary school, a few hundred metres from the party's local 'headquarters' where people were taken to be beaten in the run-up to the elections.

Before I departed, I treated myself to a copy of the government mouthpiece, The Herald.  There are advertisements for generators and water pumps.  The second page proclaims, 'Victoria Falls opens multi-quadrillion dollar truck-inn'. Last but not least, there is a quarter-page colour ad placed by the National Social Security Authority, featuring and congratulating (I quote) "His Excellency Cde Robert Gabriel Mugabe on being elected as the President of Zimbabwe". This week our dollar is losing 10 zeros.  Many of us didn't even get a chance to see the 100 billion dollar notes that are being sold on Ebay for as much as USD 100.  Like many other banknotes, the 100 billions came and went rather fast.

That's it folks - Thanks for reading.