The Zimbabwe Situation

A few years ago I stumbled across a news article online written by a British journalist who was commenting on Zimbabwean women. (This was around the time Prince Harry in the UK started dating Chelsy Davis, who is Zimbabwean, and views on what a Zimbabwean woman was like suddenly became terribly relevant to the UK media).

As I recall it, the item declared that a Zimbabwean woman jokes on a par with the blokes (whom she’ll call ‘okes’), and she can apparently crack open a bottle of Castle Lager with her teeth while changing a car’s flat-tyre with one hand. There was more in the same sort of tone. I remember feeling outrage at the piece, mostly because it was a glaring example of empty-headed stupid class snobbery. But I have to admit that there was also something about it that I liked.

This woman he portrayed was a woman who knew how to ‘make a plan‘. Zimbabweans - of all sexes and races - are known the world-over for their ability to find humour in the most terrible situations, but also for their ability to construct a solution out of chaos. We ‘make’ plans: we build them out of nothing. I am hugely proud of both these characteristics in Zimbabwean people.

‘You’ve got to be joking’, I hear you cry, ‘Your country is a mess and falling apart!’.

This is true. But let me tell you that if it was anyone else’s country it would have fallen apart about seven years ago. Mugabe and Gideon Gono and the rest of the junta are doing their very best to bludgeon the country to tiny shards of its former glory, but as fast as they do so Zimbabweans everywhere ‘make a plan’.

With spit, a bit of wire and some borrowed string we hold the fragments together. Businesses that should have died many years ago are still painfully struggling along: a bit of forex bought here, sold there, traded with a runner on his way to SA; resources swapped and bartered when there is no money and so on. It’s getting harder and harder to do but the fact we have lasted as long as we have is a credit to the tenacity and spirit of Zimbabweans - their ability to ‘make a plan’ - and has absolutely nothing to do with the Zanu PF ruling junta so hell-bent on destroying everything we have.

The Zimbabwean woman who can open a bottle of Castle Lager with her teeth would only do so because she didn’t have a bottle-opener handy, and aren’t you glad she has that ability to ‘make a plan’? Because now you can drink the beer. Sure, some Zimbabwean women joke with the ‘okes’ as rowdily as the best of them, but there was a song written about that sort of woman, and the title was “The Lady is a Champ”. We can do lots more than that: turn tights into emergency fan-belts, magic a meal out of almost nothing, hold spirits together when the ‘okes’ in our families slump into despair under the strain of trying to keep providing as they had been able to do in the past.

I know how to use a bar of soap in an emergency when there is a hole in the car radiator on a long distance journey, but this paltry skill fades in comparison to Zimbabwean women who live in the rural areas. No transport to carry a load of firewood? No problem! Chop up those two trees over there, tie them in a bundle and she’ll carry them on her head for several kilometers. Fill the drum - drum! - with water and they can manage that too. I am awe-struck with the survival abilities of women who live in the rural areas, by their stoic strength.

I’ve been on holiday for a little while and have just got back to the task of being a Sokwanele activist again.

Before I left I made sure I’d be able to receive and upload the posts for this blog emailed to me by colleagues and the links articles pulled together by three very generous volunteers. Except it didn’t work out the way I had expected it to, and there was no Internet connection at my destination! It’s not a broken fan-belt or a hole in the radiator, and thankfully I didn’t need to use my teeth as a bottle-opener, but I did need to make a plan.

I cracked my mental-knuckles and hunkered down to the task. Off we went to a nearby larger town to see if there was an Internet Cafe. I found one, but it was closed most of the time. I later discovered the owner was a surfer-dude who spent 65% of his time on the waves, 5% of his time opening up his Cafe and the rest of the time sleeping off (I imagine) the effects of too much a booze and the mbanje I absolutely smelled on the air when I was in there on the couple of occasions it was open!

The plan I made, which worked, was to drive by the Cafe every day, park outside it and hijack the wifi connection he left on even when the Cafe was closed. The mbanje I think, induced forgetfulness and a certain tardiness on his part, because he didn’t once change the password needed to access the connection. My partner was posted as century, and whenever someone walked past I’d hide the laptop, and rummage for mysterious lost stuff around my feet as if there was a very good reason for us to park the car there every day but never get out.

The initial eureka moment of being able to successfully ‘make a plan’ soon wore off and was replaced by jumpiness and nerves brought on by hefty guilt. All this amplified by the immense heat of sitting in a closed-up car while the sun beat relentlessly down on the tarmac outside. “This is not right!” I wailed, in between demanding “Is anyone coming? Are you watching!?! You’d better be paying attention!!”

“If he wanted to earn money”, my unflappable partner repeated every day, “Then he’d get his butt out the waves and into his Cafe, and he’d open it so normal people can use it”.

This is true, but its also not entirely fair. So, in an effort to be a lady who was also a champ, on the few occasions the Cafe was open we went in and I checked my email properly and felt blissfully calm because there was no guilt and a paid-for beer in my hand. (I suspect the calmness was also aided by the distinct whiff of mbanje emanating from a room somewhere near the bar.) I did the updates, but beyond reassuring myself there hadn’t been a full-on military coup at home I avoided reading the news in depth because I was, after all, meant to be taking a break.

On our last proper visit to the Cafe, I had the distinct feeling that the surfer-dude had a ‘made a plan’ of his own to ensure he fully recouped any lost income resulting from his hijacked wifi connection. By now I was sure we’d been discovered.

“Aaa-haaaaaa”, he cheerfully yelled, recognising us as we walked in (I hoped from previous proper visits and not because he’d spotted us in the car outside his Cafe one afternoon). Two beers arrived before we’d ordered them; two more replaced them before we’d completely finished them; another two materialised when we were half-way through our second drinks.

“Oh my word”, my partner groaned.

“You will drink every single beer that appears,” I hissed at him. “It’s only right”. He reflected for a moment, and then happily said OK, as the realisation dawned that he had been presented with a rare opportunity to get blind-drunk without reproach or dirty looks from me.

That’s how it was that our return journey began first thing the next morning with a very very strong coffee, two paracetamol and something to settle my wobbly stomach.

Half-way back I allowed myself to browse the news properly again while more strong coffee was bought from a garage that had newspapers stacked up near the door. I realised that while I was in my holiday hiatus, the world, it seemed, had fallen on its ear in a crisis over credit; I learned South Africa’s new leader was Kgalema Motlanthe, that Zimbabwe still did not have a cabinet, and that Mugabe was still being incalcitrant (thank God I missed him talking at the UN). I also learned that Paul Newman had died.

“Paul Newman died”, I numbly told my grey-around-the-gills partner, when he returned clad in his very darkest sunglasses with coffee in hand.

“He must have been very old”, he replied.

“He was Butch Cassidy!” I said distressed, as if that said everything it needed to, but my partner obviously still felt too grey from all those beers to try follow the remark through to its incomprehensible conclusion.

So the second part of the journey continued with me stewing to myself over why the death of an elderly American actor would leave me feeling as if the world had altered a bit while I slept, when the fact that Zimbabwe still didn’t have a cabinet had left me unsurprised and bizarrely unmoved.

I touched base again with colleagues yesterday. “So, what’s news?” I was asked in my first phone call. “Well, things seem fairly bad in the world with this whole credit crunch thing going on”, I relayed some non-Zimbabwean news helpfully, figuring I should stick with credit crunch information since comment about Paul Newman’s death might be met with total bemusement.

“Credit crunch!” came the reply, “CREDIT CRUNCH! Let me tell YOU about a &%$”* Credit Crunch!…”

There was a moment of silence, then, “Actually, I can’t talk to you now, I have a very big headache”.

Then another pause followed by a very grumpy, irritated disbelieving, “Credit crunch… my God….”.

“OK” I said meekly, already mentally backing out the coversation with my hands in the air in the surrender position. But I dared a last mild question, asked in my sweetest voice: “Bring me back up to speed, will you? Write a blog post on it…?” I survived the verbal onslaught that that question brought on, and Chipo did write a post, and it is here, published yesterday. If you haven’t already you should read it: it’s a bizarre freakish through-the-looking-glass weird view of life in Zimbabwe’s economy today. Gono has a lot to answer for.

The next conversation with another colleague was harder, but by now my post-holiday glow of well-being had sufficiently dimmed to realise that neither credit crunch nor the death of Paul Newman would be suitable topics of conversation. So I skirted both, cheerfully answering that my break had been good, and asking her how she was.

“I’m struggling”, she said. “I’m feeling miserable and I can’t seem to stop crying. Things are so bad. People are suffering. It’s getting worse by the minute. I don’t know what to do anymore to help. I feel bad that I feel this miserable because I am so lucky and others are far worse off”.

There was nothing I could say at all beyond a very unhelpful “I’m sorry”, and “You need to take some time for yourself”. There is a not a word she uttered that is untrue; nothing I can haul up before her to say, “Look at this. It’s not that bad, it’ll be OK”. I was left at the end feeling very uncomfortable about the fact that her despair was met with virtual silence: nothing to say, no foothold to point to anywhere to show her she can use that as a foundation to ‘make a plan’ to get her through.

The day limped on after those conversations: I learned more about changes in my short absence from all things Zimbabwean. Someone I regarded as a friend had done a midnight flit to South Africa, too overwhelmed by the enormity of her decision to say goodbye to her friends and family. At least, that’s what I choose to think of her decision to not say goodbye, because the alternative, that her actions were callous and unkind, sits heavily with me.

I learned that a couple more people I know have decided in the time I was away to leave Zimbabwe. One in particular leaves with huge wads of heavy lead in his boots, and his heart chained with the strongest chains to this dreadful but beautiful country we call home, and I know he will carry a weight of sadness at the loss of this land with him wherever he goes. He has to go because he can’t feed or educate his children anymore. And there it is: the reason is that baldly simple and that acutely painful and that unavoidable and irrefutable.

I spent yesterday sometimes blindly staring out the window, the whacky-backy-smoking surfer-dude from a normally closed cyber-cafe feeling like something that happened ten years ago instead of a couple of days ago.

At other moments yesterday, I adjusted to the shock of being plunged back into the icy unforgiving waters that are slowly drowning my much-loved country, while everyone around her swims desperately trying to stay afloat, getting tireder and tireder all the time. I struggled in the face of the magnitude of it all to ‘make a plan’, think of practical things that we can all work towards with the aim of making some kind of difference. It was impossible.

This morning I woke up with Paul Newman on my mind again. I had figured out on the journey back what it was about his death that had shifted my world a little bit. Two reasons: the first reason is that, as a child, I was Butch Cassidy. I was a girl, yes, but we’ve already established that Zimbabwean girls grow into women who can open bottles of lager with their teeth while changing a spare type with one hand: I was a Butch Cassidy kind of girl.

My first bike was second-hand and was given to me on my birthday. There was a civil war on, and sanctions, and the bike, to kids in other parts of the world, would look like a really ugly black adult messenger bike, but to me it was the best thing in the world.

I lived in a ’sort-of’ town that had one tar-road down the middle. So I careened downhill on dirt-roads with my legs stuck out in front of me, daring the loose stones and road corrugations with no brakes and zero shock-absorbers. I fell off on many occasions. I was as battered and scraped as the bull-terrier who kept me company, but I was fearless. So was the bull-terrier fearless - blind in one eye from one too many encounters with a spitting cobra.

When I wasn’t on my bike I was making paths through the bush, parting grass taller than my head, exploring and playing in the sun, the dry fragrant scent of the Zimbabwean bush brushing off on my shorts and t-shirts, the only type of clothes I ever wore.

My parents let me get on with it. I suspect this was partly in recognition of the fact that I was a Butch Cassidy type of girl and I probably couldn’t be stopped, but perhaps it was also because the times were tough and I needed to shape up to them. I think they knew the bull terrier would flush the snakes before I did, and they knew I needed to learn to face challenges and figure out how to ‘make a plan’ because that was the life ahead of me in the country we were living in. I needed to grow up and learn that tights weren’t just tights, they were also really useful substitute fan-belts. We didn’t know what the future was then, but I’ll bet no one then ever believed it could be as bad as it is today.

The second reason Newman’s death woke something me is the song, that special song. I had a relative who whistled all the time. In the way all parrots kept in cages seem to only know how to wolf-whistle, the only tune he ever seemed to learn was ‘Raindrops keep falling on my head’ - the theme tune from Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid. It must have been a song that seeped into our family lexicon because another relative had discovered an infuriating way to succinctly tell me to figure out how to get myself out of my overwhelmingly important childhood problems.

“Well”, he would say, after I finished reeling off all the things that were going to stop the earth rotating on its axis, “You’d better do yourself some talking to the sun” (paraphrasing lyrics from the song). In other words, ‘life’s tough; figure it out’ - or - ‘make a plan’.

I can recall more than one occasion where my father comforted me by singing from the song while I cried:

But there’s one thing I know
The blues they send to meet me won’t defeat me
It won’t be long till happiness steps up to greet me

Those are the bits of the song I can remember from my childhood.

This morning I struggled through my music collection to find the song again and I listened to it all the way through, and I found there was something in it for the Butch Cassidy in the Zimbabwean woman too:

But there’s one thing I know
The blues they send to meet me won’t defeat me
It won’t be long till happiness steps up to greet me

Raindrops keep fallin’ on my head
But that doesn’t mean my eyes will soon be turnin’ red
Cryin’s not for me
‘Cause I’m never gonna stop the rain by complainin’
Because I’m free
Nothin’s worryin’ me

I know this truth. I am free. I need to remember this. I learned this from Victor Frankl who wrote:

We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.

Today I choose to dwell on the past, my childhood, to immerse myself in the fact that Zimbabwean children today do not have what I had then. They can’t be Butch Cassidy, recklessly running free, living without fear, crazy with the joy of life. Terror has been brought to their homes, and so has hunger and hardship. They forage for food, for berries, rather than part the long grass to make paths that go nowhere. They survive; they don’t play. They are burdened by their parents worries, by the struggle all around them, by friends coming and going as their families move and move to survive. It’s not right.

The attitude I choose? Today I have wept for the man who used to whistle to me cheerfully when I was a child, now penniless in his old age. His pension a nonsense. I cried when listening to the song because it brought all the people from my past flooding back. As tough as it was and as poor as we were, their happiness has been stifled by the oppressive cruelty and stupidty of a band of thugs and morons determined to take a whole nation down with them. Today I am angry, really angry by how much we have all lost. For the tiredness my friends and colleagues and I am experiencing, for the fact we are all carrying multiple burdens - the ones we all endure to survive - but especially angry for the heaviest burden of them all: despair.

Tomorrow will be different. I will be back again properly. Tomorrow I will start ‘talking to the sun’, try to remember that the ‘rain can’t be stopped by complaining’, that ‘cryin’s not for me’. Tomorrow I will remind myself I am free again, and choose my own attitude and my own way.

Tomorrow we’ll make a plan, and then another one, and another one, and another one. Until its over.

This entry was written by Hope on Thursday, October 2nd, 2008 at 7:33 pm.

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