Zimbabwe journal: 2005 part 1

This is a journal from my trip to Zimbabwe in February, 2005. I stayed with my friend Louis in Harare.

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Feb 1, 2005:

I’m sitting in a back yard in Harare, Zimbabwe. It is soft and breezy, with a big big blue sky and puffy pure white clouds above. The trees around me are tall and block the sun. The breeze is friendly and warm. It’s February 1. I’ve had a nap, went out to breakfast, at the edge of a glorious park – lush and varied, with open spaces and walkways.

There are people everywhere here, walking the streets. If Montclair were to have the same street population it would mean that there were workmen in every house sweeping the leaves, repairing the car, cutting the lawn, fixing up the flowers, doing the wash. The maid, Susan, was here this morning, a slight, very black woman. She ironed, swept, did some laundry, tidied up. With her was an older woman and a young baby, who mostly sat outside on the front lawn while Susan worked. She is very attractive and pleasant, greeting me with a broad smile and a curtsy-like demeanor.

On the plane from London to Zimbabwe there were two of us in a three-person set of seats, Lynne and I. Lynne is a blond woman who moves like an athlete. She had a soft ball of fat between her waist and her legs, and much too much other fat elsewhere on her body. Her face is pretty, the skin smooth and youthful, ready smile, warm blue eyes. She was coming back from London where she had “sorted out” her mother, who is going senile and getting old. The sudden raising of the mother problem was poorly timed because she and her husband have just been “booted out” of their farm, where they have raised cattle and dairy cows for the last twenty years in Gweru, in the midlands, three hours south of Harare. The instant, the very instant she mentioned the words “booted out,” in the Afrikaans tinted accent, with the “oo” coming close to the French “u” tears sprang into her eyes. “We love it here. We hate to go,” she said, she said a dozen times. Their farm is being split between four people, one of whom is a dairy farmer they have known for years. He being an accommodating sort, he allowed them to stay in their house until the end of this month. She said, “I can understand their taking the farm. But I think we should be reimbursed for it.” Speaking in the astronomical numbers of Zimbabwe today (at a doctor’s office this morning the required deposit was $800,000) she illustrated what a tiny percentage of the true worth was given back to them when the farms were redistributed. Well under 1%.

Her husband is her second husband. Her first husband was killed when another farmer’s rifle went off accidentally during the war in the 70's. She was left with three young children and a farm. She sat tight for six months, then decided to stay, and eventually married her present husband, who is a “typical farmer,” says she. “Zimbabwean farmers are all nice,” she ventured. “He’s going to be meeting me at the airport in his shorts and his fellies, with no socks.” Fellies are desert boots.

The two of them will go to England where they will try to find a job working for a dairy farmer, with hopes of eventually going into business for themselves. Their daughter is there. Their two sons are in Australia and South Africa. A typical story in these parts. Mugabe, the president, has apparently accomplished his main goal – getting rid of the white people – as they are leaving in droves. The writing is on the wall and the children of droves of Lovers of Zimbabwe are settling down in other parts of the former British empire, and the U.S. There is astronomical inflation, and the Zim dollar cannot be used outside the country. When Lynne had her mother-emergency in London, she had a choice – either buy an Air Zimbabwe ticket (there were no seats for three weeks) or use her precious hard currency. She did the latter.

Lynne and I went through customs together, then I lost her, but she came up to me as I was leaving the airport and wished me well. I hugged her, kissed her smooth, plump cheek and wished her well in her new life.

Later in the day as I was having lunch with Louis, the owner of the restaurant came over, placing her hand on Louis’s shoulder. “Umberto is in (the cancer hospital in Cape Town.) He’s very ill. The fluid is building up in his lungs.” Louis was shaken and upset by this news and consoled her. “And I sold the restaurant yesterday. Somebody came and made me an offer and I took it. I can’t do this any more, and Umberto needs me.” Louis had been telling me how this wonderful restaurant had been losing clientele as the white population thinned. It had recently become almost untenable. She was a beautiful woman, willowy and thin, small, with a flowered dress tied in the back. Her grey hair was swept back and her face was beautiful. She was pleasant and polite, but grief stricken by the loss of her restaurant and the impending loss of her husband.

The white community here is united in a strange way. Word is bond, that is for sure. They know each other and each other’s business. So far, and I’ve only been here one day, and despite the political mess, nobody I have spoken to actually WANTS to leave Zimbabwe, though they realize they have to.

Feb. 3.

The house is modest, as are so many here. There are fancy cars, but many people who are plenty wealthy drive beat up cars and trucks which are driven until they fall apart, then you buy a new one. This is the kind of vehicle which I will be a passenger in during the drive to Zambia next week. The plan is to go to Lusaka, then take two days to come back to Harare, stopping in the Luangwe Valley on the way where there is an abundance of wildlife, and birds.

The wash is done in the bathtub by the maid. The kitchen is sparsely stocked. I went to the supermarket last night, made my choices, and plan to make the dinner tonight. Meat balls with, well, I think cream sauce, though some sort of fruit may make its way in there (I had passion fruit for the first time in my life (fresh, that is) and I don’t like it. The cuts of meat were confusing,so I got hamburger meat. And stir-fried cabbage, onions, peppers, and apples, and then I am planning a peach/nectarine pie, to be rolled out with a wine bottle, baked in a frying pan. There were no walnuts or almonds, which I had also wanted to use, only peanuts. Frying pans are pretty much like pie pans? We’ll see. This is in a way like camping out. The water supply is iffy, with the hot water scalding hot and the cold water in indifferent supply, depending on how many neighbors are watering their lawns at any particular moment. I turn the spigots on the bathtub and go away for a while as the bath fills up. There IS a shower, but since the cold water supply fluctuates, and the hot water would kill you if you were standing under a shower head pumping it out, it is better to take a bath. The water heater replenishes itself by making a sound exactly like a didgeridoo.

On the window in the kitchen are several bottles of cleansers, and a spray can of “Killem”. I saw an example of ‘em last night in the bathroom, a spider on the wall about the size of my palm. I had asked about snakes and other things I might encounter in the back yard, but hadn’t thought to ask about spiders, so I had no idea if it was a dangerous one or not. It wasn’t a scorpion. The spider and I looked at each other for a while, decided we didn’t much care what the other was doing, and went about our business. The first time I went to the bathroom the spider just sat on the wall. The second time, hours later, the spider was still there when I entered, then I looked up and it was gone. That was a little unsettling.

The weather is warm, breezy, beautiful. I went for a 45 minute walk along Drew Road and another road. I was the only white person out walking, though there was a steady stream of black Africans walking or riding their bikes. I noted to myself that I had seen tv pictures of Africans walking along roads before. Their demeanor, the packages carried on the head, the children carried on the back, the greetings passing back and forth looked familiar. I had a digital camera in one pocket, and 120,000 zim dollars (about $12) in the other pocket and was a little uneasy, especially when I took out the camera to take some pictures, revealing my pocket’s contents. I said good morning to everyone I met and they were mostly friendly, “Good morning, medem,” or “How are you?” or just a good morning came warmly back to me. I thought how nice it would be if the stretes of Montclair were flowing with its residents the way the streets of Harare are, though of course the reason for this flow, the poverty, .would be unwelcome anywhere. Zim dollars are reckoned in the millions, inflation has been so bad and money is but one of many means of putting food in the belly.

Back to dinner: I started with the meat balls, cutting up the mushrooms and putting them in first, then mixing ground beef with bread which had been soaked in milk, some nutmeg and chopped onions. I put the meat balls in the pan and the phone rang – it was Louis asking if everything was going fine, which it was – until I got back to the kitchen and found some of the meatballs burned. Never mind. I opened the bottle of wine which Louis had got to go with this adventure in Zimbabwean domesticity (a first for both of us) and splashed some in the pan. Cooked them some more, threw in some milk and voila, meatball with a cream sauce.

The pie was next. There was no pie pan so I went with a frying pan, but it had a handle which I was afraid would melt or explode or something in the oven, so I went outdoors to the young man who was repairing the security gate next door (I don’t know if the security is because people might get robbed or just to give a lot of people work) and asked if he had a screwdriver. “No, medem.” “I need to put this frying pan in the oven, and I would like to take the handle off before I do.” “Oh, yes, medem,” and he picked up a thick wire which had a diagonal cut at the end and there was the screwdriver.

(Since writing this paragraph the front gate was breached in the middle of the night. The would-be thieves were trying to steal the motors which run the gate, which are worth a lot of money. They were probably tipped off by the locksmith who took the gate’s locks away with him to fix. So I take it back. The security is for real.)

Feeling very proud of myself, I went back into the kitchen, peeled the nectarines and peaches, added some sugar, nutmeg (there were no other spices in the cupboard and since there will be no cooks in residence after I leave, I didn’t want to stock a whole spice shelf, and there was no ground cinnamon in the supermarket, just cinnamon sugar and cinnamon stick) a little flour and let it sit. The dough for the crust was sitting in the refrigerator. I took the small cutting board (a luxury, I thought, at this point) and took the opened bottle of wine out of the frig and secured the cork, since this was to be my rolling pin. It made an excellent rolling pin because the wine made it heavy, so the rolling out went faster. I had turned on the oven so it would be hot when I had filled the shell and put the extra little bits across the top in a lattice.

The workman who had unscrewed the frying pan handle appeared at the top half of the dutch door. His English was poor, but he conveyed that the electricity had gone out. I guess the oven and the machine he was working with were too much for the system. I walked around the house looking for the fuse box, we found the meter, which was dead, and then decided to wait until Susan, the maid, returned, or one of the handymen at the neighbor’s came back from lunch. I was NOT going to call Louis unless we could not resolve this ourselves. The handyman next door came back and, in Shona, they worked it out and the power went back on. I’m leaving the oven off until the workman is finished on the security gate, then will finish the pie.

He said twenty minutes, and it’s five past four, that is, two hours later. He’s been working diligently, not that he’s lazy, just that life is strange.

I think it’s time for another nap. In a day or so I should be totally acclimated, and I’m not uncomfortable, just struck occasionally with fatigue.