Zimbabwe journal: 2005 part 4

This is part of my journal for my trip to Zimbabwe in 2005: Sunday, Feb. 13^th

While waiting in the truck outside of a store while Louis went to get bread, a street vendor tried to sell me a bead rose for Valentine’s day. “Thanks, but I don’t want one,” I told him, “besides, I don’t have any money at all.”

He laughed and gestured after Louis, “You must ask Boss.”

"I’m supposed to ask the Boss for money to buy a rose for him for Valentine’s Day?” Louis, darling man, wouldn’t know Valentine’s Day if he fell over it anyway.

We both laughed and he went away.

Across the way they were having a political rally for the opposition party, MDP. That was a little surprising, given the press reports. There were about 50 mostly young men in an open area near the shopping center. I couldn’t hear them, but watched them applaud a speaker, then they clapped together, swayed together, singing a song in Shona (I guess). When Louis came back I asked which party they were with he identified them as MDP, probably he recognized the song and the chants, though I didn’t ask him. There were no women in the group.

We had a lazy Sunday morning – bacon, eggs, fried tomatoes and toast, a little bit of cricket watching, which I enjoyed, and then we drove to the game park about 40 kilometers outside of Harare. The highways were not crowded, one of the gas stations had no gas, which happens all the time.

Louis explained the situation with some farms, showing the poor crops on formerly lush farmland as we passed it. I asked how the brilliant Robert Mugabe could possibly think his plan was going well. Louis said that Mugabe probably thinks that this is just a phase which Zim has to go through with as they take over the formerly superb farms. It is sad to see, but there is surprisingly little bitterness evident. Perhaps anger, or a feeling of waste, but everyone seems to understand that something like this had to be done. (This was before the really massive uprooting of the population, the murders, the razing of homes, etc.)

This formerly milk producing country is now importing milk, so one of the former farmers has struck a deal with the Dairy Board, which has bought 50% of his farm. This is a brand new arrangement, and possibly a hopeful one. If the former white farmers who had such efficient and profitable farms going, can team up with African owners, perhaps everyone will benefit.

The wheat situation is also pretty bad. To make wheat grow in a sub-tropical climate like this one you have to 1) have special seed, which was developed a few decades ago at an agricultural research facility here by a man who is now in Australia, and 2) plant according to a very strict schedule so that the seed can germinate in cold temperatures. It also needs heavy irrigation, at least for a time, and this is expensive, and with small landholders working together on smaller plots, it is difficult to organize the irrigation.

One white farmer’s farm was taken away. The new owner gave them a few months to get out. They could take with them all their things except the farm implements. The new owner said he considered that this land was his in trust and if the laws changed in the future, he would give their farm back to them, having had the time to make his fortune with it in the meantime. A hopeful sign. Who knows what would happen in real time, but the gesture was noted and appreciated.

We went through the game park. Louis was rather dubious that much game would be left, but we saw a dozen or so giraffe, half a dozen zebra, 20-30 wildebeest, about 30 impala, 7 rhinos, two ostrich, a tortoise, a hawk, several baboons, a Samosa (?) Monkey, elephant dung (no elephants), and butterflies in profusion, plus hundreds of termite mounds. It was beautiful and exciting.

Last night Louis took me to an Indian restaurant owned by the mother of his partner in the Nyanga property. The food was outstanding, the best Indian food I think I have ever eaten, and the candlelit atmosphere very pleasant and romantic.

Louis spent part of the drive back forming plans to get the game park functioning well again. We came across maybe 6 other cars in there today, which was more than he had expected. The roads were atrocious, and he thought the hotels and other businesses in Harare could be persuaded to grade the roads so that people could get to the park easily. He also proposed, to himself and me, a day on which the people of Harare would be invited to the park, with several events going on, etc., and thought they would love it Harare people never go to the park. At least if they found a way to bring those people, the park would not languish as it does now. He’s very good at figuring out how to make things happen. All in all, we saw more game than he had expected and he was heartened. The reason, by the way, that rhino horn is valued as an aphrodisiac is that when rhinos have sex it goes on and on and on and on and on and on. I hadn’t known of the sex lives of rhinoceros. Having seen a few, I think I’ve learned all I want to know.

Cricket turns out to be a much more interesting game than I had ever suspected. It is fun to watch, as long as you’re doing something else at the same time. It’s better paced than baseball, I think.

After driving around all morning, and watching cricket and taking a nap in the afternoon, I was getting a little stir crazy, so I went out for a walk. As usual, the quiet stream of Africans was going up and down the street, families, a few couples, young men kicking around a soccer ball, old, young, a security guard, finally, after a half hour’s walk, three Arab looking white guys. I have no idea what they think of me. They notice me, they look me up and down, they say hello, they walk quietly by, men and women, not in gangs, more in friend or family groups. But seeing me, what do they think? Do they see me as a target? I go to the gym every day at the same time, then go to the supermarket, with my little purse over my shoulder. I have two silver chains around my neck, my sneakers – I have no idea what they would find of interest. I don’t carry my passport so if they kidnapped me, what would they do? I don’t like living behind a wall and am not going to be a vegetable, and the only place to really get exercise, other than the gym (at least that I have so far figured out) is walking along the street.

The skin of virtually all of the people is jet black. There obviously has been only a tiny incidence of either intermarriage or exploitation of African women by the white colonialists. Louis said that there was no habit of raping or otherwise having sex with the African women, and, as I say, from the color of the skins of the people I pass on the street, I believe him. There seems to have been a live-and-let-live attitude and many of the farmers were very forward looking. Some of them gave shares in their farms to farmers who worked for them, others provided schools and other services for the Africans. For those Africans, the dispossession of the white farmers has brought deeper poverty, and Mugabe is willing to make the country go through this as they get a handle on how to farm the land themselves, if they ever do. That is the question, will they ever? Mugabe and his party have stripped the country of so much infrastructure while making fortunes themselves that it is difficult for others to make a living, much less have the capital to go into large enterprises. The white people, with their higher educations and their entrepreneurial experience, are living very nicely. They have been kicked in the stomach over and over again, their businesses and properties confiscated, etc., and they just come back and establish something else. The white people here have lost so much that prattling about colonialist exploitation seems a little empty. Many, maybe most, of them have moved away, taking their skills with them. Many of them don’t want to go, as I have said before, but they are realistic.

I think I will ask Givemore and Susan what the people on the street think of me, and see if they think I should walk there.

I decided to wash the down pillows this morning. It was a sunny day and I thought they would dry quickly. I washed them in the bathtub (I had left plenty of other laundry for Susan to do), and lay them out in the sun, very heavy. I lay them over a bush to dry. I lifted up one of them to rearrange the feathers inside and all the feathers fell out. Susan laughed out loud as we watched these little clumps of greyish glump on the ground. We spread out the feathers on a piece of plastic and placed the plastic behind the bush so that Louis would not see it when he came home. I would be embarassed. Now my problem was how to get the feathers back into something that would hold them inside the pillow case.

Susan looked at me blankly as we discussed what I would do when Louis and I left for Nyanga. She says she will hang them up on the line beind the landlady’s house, where that is, exactly, I don’t know.

It is in the 80's, breezy, has a little rainstorm now and then, keeping the lawns and bushes lush. The fruits and vegetables are not of good quality, which surprises me, and there are shortages now and then. The phone got cut off last night, but is back on now. It’s nice living here despite all this.